I remembered Mortal Kombat having announcements, but they may have announced more up front than I remember. And I'll get to Street Fighter in a bit.
I make the moveset point to demonstrate that even with a character's name, you are still not an entirely informed consumer. My point of view is a trust in Sakurai at this point, hence why I bought the Pass. But you're saying that you want to be informed and I contest that buying a character while not knowing how they function or what specific content they come with isn't that far removed from just not knowing the character. The only difference is the name of the characters being known before hand. To be fair, if that's what you personally need to consider yourself "informed," then that's your take. I consider myself informed enough at being told what I'm getting in the form of five unique newcomers. Now, to also be fair, I've clearly positioned myself as someone interested in unique move sets, so that helps influence my choice. And I think to some degree that might be a basis for part of this argument. While there are characters I support more than others, I don't assign the same major differences in value to newcomers I support directly and those I don't. And that's not to criticize anyone who does just to be clear. And the only real objectivity that comes into the situation is whether or not the character functions as intended and isn't broken. That's the level of quality argument there, and that's completely objective. What is subjective is whether or not you like them and that applies to a named character as well. It may be fact that you like or dislike certain characters, but that's a personal objective stance that is just subjective at the end of the day. It's all just kind of subjective by nature of being content in video game and there not really being metrics of objectivity with regards to the game.
I just don't agree that it's scummy. It's just a business practice meant to give people an option. There are some areas where I believe the power dynamics of consumerism mean that you can't make your own, informed choice. But in an entertainment industry I do think there needs to be more personal accountability of what you purchase and why since it's all non-essential. I don't even get a sense of "heavily suggesting" from Nintendo, just regular old advertisement of it when relevant. There's some degree of an argument for showing them off as part of the moral highground, but I also just don't agree and don't see the issue with waiting. The Fighter's Pass isn't going anywhere, they're not doing anything to give incentive to buy the pass NOW. And the characters are all individually available and will be so. And I've clearly stated why I disagree that character names should be enough "information" if you're going the well and truly informed consumer route.
And oh boy! I get to talk about the ****ty practices of the game industry.
Back to Street Fighter V, it launched with 16 characters, and barely any features. Here's a wonderful article to highlight that game: (
https://kotaku.com/street-fighter-vs-launch-sure-has-been-a-bummer-1760146427). Mario Tennis Aces, Splatoon 2, and ARMS may have all launched with less content than they should have for example, but they still released better than Street Fighter V and all of their content was given away for free with the sole exception of the major expansion pack of the Octoling DLC last year.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 might be the single most predatory game in existence. The game has buyable tiers for it's version of the "Battle Pass," includes massive "micro"-transactions to buy cosmetic DLC and additional weapons including a $28 value that just mainly gives you a hammer and some random loot-boxes (
https://gamingbolt.com/call-of-duty-black-ops-4-adds-a-28-hammer), and a $50 Season Pass. Mind you, they announced at launch that the Season Pass' contents would not be available separately and the only way to access the content of the season pass would be to buy the entire thing (
https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/13/17447600/call-of-duty-black-ops-4-dlc-season-pass-price).
Do I even need to say anything about the likes of a game like Fallout 76?
And I mean lootboxes in general Nintendo has stepped into with their full price games. The free mobile ****, yeah and the model is at least justifiable there. But they're full release titles haven't gotten to the point of lootboxes being stuffed into tons of their games and there aren't pay to win models in those games. Nintendo has still been committed to bringing us full experiences for the most part and generally doing a good job of making up for games that lack content with free post-release DLCs. The most egregious example I can think of in recent memory of a poorly produced and content light game was Super Mario Party. But that's more of the exception rather than the rule.
Nintendo does lots of little ****ty things and does have predatory business practices. The Online is a big issue and forcing cloud saves exclusively behind a paywall is ****ty. They occasionally get too trigger happy with DLCs (I think Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valentia had like $45 of DLC versus the $40 total of the game). Lots of issues, sure. But they also could be so, so very much worse than they are. The developers seem to have a lot of enthusiasm for games still and they pretty much never launch a genuinely broken product, and in the few instances where they have, they've generally been able to stabilize things pretty quickly (Usually Smash online lol). You also have things like Iwata taking a paycut during the Wii U era to deal with lower revenue and so on. Nintendo hasn't completely devolved into the truly grotesque game company arena yet.