>>58577622LZA was supposed to release in 2024 but couldn't due to the Switch 2 being delayed, so they were forced to hold it back until this year.
The DLC was meant to be this year's sole mainline release, staying true to the "one notable mainline release every year" schedule, but due to the aforementioned delay, they had to awkwardly squish it between the base game and Gen 10's announcement in February next year, else the DLC wouldn't sell because who the fuck cares about a DLC for a Legends game when the Gen 10 hype cycle (30th anniversary too, btw) is now underway?.
The DLC was never "content deliberately cut from the main game and sold back to you for 30 dollars", but it WAS "content deliberately planned to be a more expansive postgame sold to you for 30 dollars", following up on how the Teraleak also revealed GameFreak intends to do DLC for every mainline installment after SV, when normally this kind of content would be a post-launch update like how it was in Arceus, which ALSO had content that relied heavily on reusing and repurposing preexisting assets, the very same way LZA is handling Hyperspace Lumiose.
