I have never supported a game by buying costumes, and I was actively annoyed by Capcom with SF IV. I didn’t see the value proposition in buying those costumes - so I didn’t and I happily lived with my decision without bashing the company or their business model. Looking at it now I have a lot more sympathy for the need to have a continuous revenue stream if you are going to keep updating the game.
I would support paid DLC costumes for KI and gladly pay for things that looked good and came at a reasonable price (whatever that means). I tossed a few bucks at MKX to get the sub zero skin that supported tournaments because why not? I have now even bought the SFV season pass, just to support fighting games (even though the more I play that game the less I like it).
I am firmly in the camp that is suggesting MS is strangely averse to this payment model. I’m totally spitballing here, but it looks to me like a couple of things are going on. First, it seems to me that it was clear that from the start KI was not really being made with the expectation that it would make money. S1 was without any doubt a game to bolster the Xbox1 launch lineup. They were fine to lose money on it, as long as it wasn’t too much. Everything points to that, including the failure to lock down a long term contract with the developer. Why lock them down if you might not need any more content? I wouldn’t be surprised if S1 took a loss, financially. But the game was very well received and had a generally positive buzz in a launch lineup that (for both systems truthfully) didn’t have a lot of buzz. Most people were just upgrading their CoD box and the other games were not a priority. My view is they really didn’t know what would happen after S1 ended.
For S2 I think they put their toes in the water and got the green light (mostly) to make the game for the long haul, but the green light came very late in the planning phase and IG was basically nose to the grindstone for 10 months… I think a lot of good ideas for things got hooks in the game, so you see stuff like KI gold that still really has no sensible use in the game almost two years later. I think they were just pressed for time.
S3 was done more deliberately and clearly on a better schedule. But I’m guessing there is a pretty linear chain of people leading to the final decision maker, and the decisions for things like use of KI gold aren’t made within the KI team. This means basically pitching internally and I’m guessing the final decisions are often very risk averse. It helps explain some of these inexplicable “we’ll see” and “soon” issues even for pretty trivial reveals. The final decider is in Baja this weekend or got pulled into the Halo discussion or whatever. No one is going to wake the boss in the middle of the night to ask him if he remembered to sign the memo allowing KI gold to be used. Further, MS seems to prioritize avoiding negative publicity rather than making money. So I would agree with the suggestion that they are missing an opportunity because they don’t want to read a bunch of forums and websites with people complaining about paid DLC. But the game is still being managed as a feature of the Xbox brand rather than a stand alone entity. I’m reasonably confident that the PC port happened because MS’s overall PC gaming strategy needed some Windows titles and the KI team was able to make this port - not because someone in management said “I think we will sell another million units of KI if we port to Win10.”
I’m also guessing that the metrics for KI’s continued development and success are still not linked to revenue. I’m sure there’s monthly player quotas, or other quantifiable metrics like player hours per month. But not “bring in X revenue.” In some ways that’s great, but I think it forces the team to allocate resources in a way that bolsters those other metrics. Two guys churning out DLC costumes would probably be a good financial investment, but it likely wouldn’t bolster whatever those target metrics are. So they put the development resources into something like SL. I think SL is designed first and foremost to try to capture players time. And then secondarily to see if it will encourage revenue through microtransactions. Which is ironic because I think the public response to microtransactions in SL will be far less accepting than to costume DLC. But I think if revenue was the driving force behind KI’s development we would be seeing all kinds of DLC long before now - because that stuff sells and MS has to know if. Therefore it’s hard for me not to conclude that MS has different priorities (other than making money) for KI.
Anyway, that’s my castle in the clouds. In the absence of any real information it’s my most reasonable speculation.
TL:DR they should make colors/costumes and sell them.