To be honest, we all knew the answer beforehand. The reason for this is quite simply that with all the stuff being cut out of games and being sold for Day #1 DLC and extra money, there was no reason for Bioware NOT to do this since people buy it. For the cost of hiring some PR guy to put out a positive spin and take the brunt of the fanboy backlash, they can make an extra $10 a pop off of a huge number of people who will complain but will still hand over their money.
This is the price we pay when we support policies and trends we disagree with by giving over our money. What motivation does a company have to stop certain practices when it ultimatly makes them cash with no practical downside, the only thing they really have to worry about is just ignoring messages they were liable to ignore anyway.
It should also come as no surprise that a corperation is not going to come out and say "well, your all a bunch of idiots and will buy it" when that's the bottom line. Of course at this stage in the game, I'd imagine they COULD do that and people would still buy it. I've seen a couple of FTP MMOs, Fallen Earth being a notable example, where their item shop pretty much says this (read what some of the item descriptions say in the FE cash shop) and apparently people still buy them.
That said I do find it kind of funny that they are defending themselves by saying they didn't know about the DLC which was "developed seperatly" being ready on time, but did apparently know ahead of time for the CE.
All of that aside, my personal theory is that this DLC was originally intended to be an equivilent to "Project $10" like with Shale for Dragon Age Origins, but rather than using it for an incentive to buy new, knowing that ME3 is going to sell a ton of copies just from people wanting to see the end of the story (even if they hate the gameplay desicians), they decided to use it to pad the collector's edition instead of spending more money to develop something special for that, and otherwise charge for it as a DLC pack. Basically getting $10 a pop from those buying the game in general, rather than just from those buying it new.
I suspect we're probably going to see a trend where the $10 "first time buyer" content is only going to be for new properties, and established franchises that move a lot of copies in general are going to increasingly see everything possible pushed into the general DLC marketplace.
The big question to ask yourself here in complaining is, "is this revelation going to prevent me from buying this product?" if the answer is no, then by definition your approving of the desician no matter what you say, and are encouraging it for further releases. In the end this is a pass/fail equasion where Bioware/EA either gets your money or not, anything you say to justify it, or bellyaching, doesn't matter to them, all they care about is they have your cash in hand and havibng done it once, are liable to be able to do it again.
Such are my thoughts.
