yeah actually i did understate the time. for big publishers it can take a month just to pass cert, during which time developers are on leave (and thus unpaid) or working on dlc or patches (and thus paid, and not part of the base game development budget)
the reality is features are cut/decided on very early in development; its almost never the case that they will take a part of the game and cut it out and sell it as dlc. what usually happens is the budget starts running out, and half-in-progress features get sidelined or cut from development and turned into dlc. or while cert is being waited on or whatever, developers work on the cut material as dlc.
