I'm surprised there is a Hard mode. To me, the game seemed to be free enough for you to decide on your difficulty. Nintendo talked about you being able to immediately head towards the final boss and trying to defeat it so to me it seems like that would be the Hard mode or at least a path to minimal upgrades. At the same time, if I cover 70 - 80% of this game, am I really going to want to go back and do that all over again in a harder mode? Guess I'll find out after playing it but this is the kind of game where I feel I would complete it once and that would be it because of the size of it all. Personally, I've always liked Wind Waker and it's breezy difficulty. For me, its more about the adventure and exploration than the challenge although you do want a bit of difficulty to keep things interesting.
Nintendo just put hard mode behind a massive DLC paywall. I don't want to hear a word from anyone on this site trying to convince me that they're not attempting to nickel and dime off the backs of their hardcore fans.
There's no doubt that Nintendo is trying to squeeze out more money from games they release these days. From a business standpoint, I understand why since it's easier to make some add-on content to a completed game and get some easy money from it rather then develop a whole new game that may not sell well like Project STEAM. Yet, as mentioned above, I (and other posters) still aren't clear what is meant by a hard mode. For myself, I'm not that bothered by it since I don't really care about a Hard mode so it does seem to be superfluous content to me but I can definitely understand for the gamers who would want that kind of challenge or experience why they'd be upset about having to pay an extra $20.00 to play a game that way.
I wonder if Smash Bros DLC has something to do with this. Perhaps people were skipping the Mii costumes and just going for the new fighters and stages. Rather than allow that same pick and choose strategy where gamers would most likely only focus on the new dungeon, story elements and maybe Hard Mode, Nintendo has decided to put all this content into one package to make it more tempting in that you get these other less desirable items included with the stuff you want to let a person believe they are getting value for the cost. That way Nintendo gets the full value they want out of their DLC offerings instead of only parts of the DLC selling. Not defending the practice but just trying to figure out more on the motivation of why it wouldn't be offered in chunks like usual.
EDIT: Soren's comment above that he posted while I was typing show that we sort of agree on that point.