Litteraly did it before Xenoblade Chronicles 3 released back in 2022. They announced the season pass during the game's Direct. 

Some at the time did make similar comments to that effect, but the worry was completely unfounded once we saw it's more than meaty content in the end.

I don’t understand why you are upset with more content lol. I would happily spit out $30USD, for instance, on Zelda TotK DLC. Also, good point. Changed to Xenoblade. Why no response in any of those instances?

Deku Deals informed me that Mario vs. DK physical is on sale for $35 right now, lol. Play the long game.

Every platform nowadays has more games than I could ever hope to play in my adult lifetime. My backlog is in the hundreds; I'm just now most of the way through a serious playthrough of Breath of the Wild. I'm a lot happier after I got past the FOMO and started waiting for sales for everything.

But you're right about Nintendo games though. It doesn't make as much sense to wait on them, because the sales are rarer and stingier. Still, getting a Nintendo game for 25-30 percent off is better than getting it for 0 percent off when it'll be years before I even take the game out of the shrink wrap.

No one is upset about more content only about feeling like meaningful content is either been cut from the original to sell later or being too aggressively priced.

I wouldn't necessarily conflate reactions to different games that some people may not have been following or cared about. Although if I do a quick Google of Xenoblade 3 expansion pass which was 1year+  of content for $30:

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Expansion Pass Contents

Wave 1 (July 29, 2022): Helpful items and outfit color variations.

Wave 2 (By December 31, 2022): A new Hero character, quests, new outfits, and a Challenge Battle.

Wave3/4..... We get the point 

Wave 1 is completely trivial and has no marketing material alongside it to make people feel like they were missing out. Wave 2 was the first to received a stand alone trailer and properly promoted. This happened 2months after launch and goes into content a year after release.

So again I think the optics are very different with a season pass, both in value but how it's introduced  to consumers. This certainly contributes towards difference in reactions

None the less in this day and age with a billion dollar franchise I don't think we should assume this corporate defence position, it makes all the sense in the world for people to want publishers to be more fairer with pricing and promotional content, especially at newer $70 asking prices for many games. The free content from Astrobot made me turn my nose up at DKs paid DLC which honestly feels like it should be a gift for the fans and a nice post game perk. And it's not like Nintendo are alien to this (see Splatoon). 

You save a lot by buying the Switch bundle.

If they are financially doing it tough, I could understand it.

But minimal effort and maximum price is not the way forwards... Maybe it's to enable justification from shareholders to allow them to invest in technology that finally makes their next game a competent game from a technical perspective? ...One can hope.

If the only third version that GF ever made was Crystal, I would agree: mostly the same game with very few changes an additions. But no Pokémon DLC comes close to what Emerald, Platinum and specially BW2 offered. Nobody is coming back to Sword and Shield or Scarlet and Violet's DLCs after they are done with them. A lot of people keep coming back to Emerald, Platinum, and even Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon many years after their release. Why? Because despite being very similar to the base games, the additions, the changes and the overall experience is completely transformative, expanded and improved. It's like playing a bigger, better and more fun version of the base games. It was worth paying for them.

DLC? It's a one time trip that is mostly self contained and doesn't adress any of the defects or shortcomings of the base game. All of that for the very cheap price of 30-35 dollars. 

Don't fool yourself. We haven't won. We just lost another cool thing in exchange for a vastly inferior experience, and a waste of money in comparison.

If only technology was the problem lol

It is. They need to build or better yet... Buy a better game engine and middleware package.

Imo, what you're seeing both on the tech and art side is a lack of ambition. Technology is not the the problem, the technology simply reflects their level of disinterest in pushing the user experiences