While number of characters does not equal depth, character number is certainly a factor. The more characters you have, the more overall potential variety there is. Again, that's not to say that the more characters you have, the deeper your fighter is. That argument is silly.
True; I'm speaking in a bit of hyperbole, but it's really silly now-a-days to see people demand so many numbers, and then watch as only a fraction of the cast is actually considered viable, interesting, not "garbage" for real play, or even remembered in casual conversation.
Sure it helps with launch sales, and that perception of value; but what an overall waste for the actual playing of the game. So much Design time, Gameplay creation, Voicework, and effect creation, that could have been cycled into making a smaller subset all solid. I'd much rather see every character viable, well designed, and useful, than numbers added just for pre-launch hype, and little else.
However, there are inherent qualities to different characters, such as movement speed, jump arc, size, and normals, that will vary from character to character, and change matchups/playstyle. Unless every character is a stance change character, you're going to be limited by those inherent attributes.
A lot of this is rarely ever realized properly though; Varied jump arcs are nice, but some characters will have ones that lead to nothing worthwhile, while others get multi-range mixup ops or safe jump setups out of theirs. Wouldn't it be great if all 3 arcs had the same amount of viability, because they were all designed well?
Matchup wise, I'd rather see fighters move towards providing more 5/5 or 6/4 matchups, then 8/2-ish stuff. (hypothetical exaggeration for sake of making a point, so don't take those numbers too seriously!)
That said, plenty of fun can be had with 6 characters. The problem is, Killer Instinct is trying to appeal to both FGC vets and newcomers alike. Most newcomers won't even scratch the surface of depth for each character, so having a healthy robust roster is important for those folks. I would have expected this game to have released with at least 8 characters at launch. The fact that it won't will hurt initial sales.
It might, but If they get to do as they please, I don't think initial sales will matter too much. Over a 6 month period, it'd be better to have constant, decent sales, with increases as new content arrives, rather than to have a boom of sales at the start, and then have them severely drop off.
In this release of new consoles, I think having a product out there, in the sea of launch titles, is more worthwhile than waiting to put out a title, once games have started to flow. And not just one ones own system, but also on the competitions. Gamers spend time in many places now-a-days, and having a product THERE, so it can start growing community interest, have videos uploaded to the XB1 video queue for sharing, and start getting people to hype up what's already available.
If the XB1's dashboard and such keep a person in the know about updates to content they've tried, I could see that working VERY well with it's F2Jago Model.
If Tusk did come back i'd rather they blatantly copied the look of Darkwolf from Fire and Ice.
Though he could always have costumes inspired by both looks i guess.
Yeah, I'd like to see both considered! While Tusk felt like an oddity in KI2, having him well-represented in this new game could actually be interesting, especially since DH is actually giving these character some moveset identity now. It'd be cool to see something like Soul Calibur's Nightmare, adapted to KI's style.
