The comparison is apt for one reason. In both cases, I, the end user, am "forced" to play/see something I necessarily didn't want to see, because the developer is basically "sanctioning off" content (or rather, holding it ransom) that I would rather have access to as soon as possible, if not right out the box.
And for a game whose main focus is on its multiplayer, sanctioning off content that directly pertains to that mode of play is stupid.
Someone back on the KOFXIII topic put it best: imagine if you will, that a good amount of Story Mode or CaS content was sanctioned off, until you got, let's say, 50 wins in online/local Vs. mode. And there was no other way to do it. You HAD to play that other mode to get to what you wanted.
Could you imagine the outrage that the more "casual" players would experience, at something like that? I can guess they wouldn't exactly want to hear to "but you should be experiencing the mode that the devs worked so hard on" in that case, now would they?