Yup. You can wail "SAY IT AIN'T SO", but Nintendo can easily wail back - if they ever decided to begin wailing directly to consumers - "THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN'".
Speaking with IGN at E3 last week, Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto revealed that the company's first foray into the business model, popular with casual gamers but often despised by more serious fans, will be Steel Diver.
And not a straight re-release of the 3DS launch title, either, but a fresh game that changes the game's design and adds stuff like a four-player battle mode.
The exact model Nintendo will be using to charge players for chunks of the game hasn't yet been decided, as they are focusing "on balancing how a pricing model would affect the entertainment value of the final product".
Slippery slope, this! It starts innocently enough, charging for submarine skins, but one day you'll pay $2 for a Zelda game then have to pay for the gear to unlock the deeper areas of dungeons and oh god this is a dark and terrible future.