BDSP What if BDSP was released initially "incomplete" on purpose?

[Oriden]

If my game was in such a state I would beg reviewers not to touch it.

Why? The game was still perfectly playable, they could experience the story, graphics and battles just fine. It was just missing the title animation and a story animation- the latter of which people didn't even know was missing until the patch mentioned it. And the music was in an unfinished state, but any reviewer would have been told that it was and just review the rest of the game with the knowledge that the music would be updated on release day.

The missing content was largely inconsequential, as far as reviews were concerned.

 

[FelipePR]

Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were released incomplete, with a large portion of its game content missing from the physical cartridge game. Said missing content was made available to us with a Day 1 patch, adding everything that wasn't included in the physical cartridge (the game's finished music, the game intro, a big part of the postgame, etc). This hasn't really happened before in a Pokemon game. So, why did they do that? O have seen people propose 3 possible reasons.

1. The answer that a lot of people seem to be giving is that the game was released in such a state simply because ILCA didn't manage to finish the game in time, and it was already time to ship the game worldwide, finished or not.

2. Some people are saying that apparently the developers (or TPCi, or Nintendo, or whoever is in charge of the game's production) decided to use cheaper cartridges, which couldn't fit the entire game, so they left part of the game out of the physical cartridges, and made the missing content available through the Day 1 Patch.

3. Another explanation that I've read online, is that ILCA just wanted to avoid part of the game being spoiled early by leakers, so they did this to hide some of the content until close to release date (or until the reviewers were given copies of the game).

Considering the apparent short production time and the graphical update that took place in between the first promotional videos and the final release of the game, the first point seems to me to be the most plausible.

The use of cartridges with lower storage capacity is also a possibility due to the global shortage of chips. But if something similar didn't happen with other releases, it seems unlikely that it would just happen as Pokémon. Still, given the franchise's ability to sell, it's not a disposable possibility.

And, as some have said, hiding attractive game content via day one patch doesn't make as much sense in this case. The initial reception towards the game was controversial, with one of the main criticisms being the lack of innovation. So, leaking information about unexpected news would possibly be positive for the game's marketing. And, as Oriden said, most of the extra content was more adding things that were missing than adding new elements to the game.