The biggest fighting game franchise is MK. Strip the visuals out of MK and see if it sells as much as it does.
Let's launch stick figure fighter for the ultra hardcore!
This is a really stupid and reductive argument. Yes stick figure fighter could actually do pretty well if the gameplay was stellar, as proven by several retro indie releases. Plus it still says nothing about whether or not
additional costumes is the thing that would push people away and even
lower your said sales-as-good metric. (it wouldn't)
And on top of that, all the people that bought MK at launch to get their mk nostalgia factor fix, aren't the same people that are still playing today obviously, they've since moved on to the next hot thing because fighting games do require a bit of dedication, and when you've ran through your "story mode" and silly SP content that barely resembles a fighting game, you have no choice but to play other actual people, cry about how hard online is, quit and boot it up once in a blue moon afterwards.
Which is fine, since you've gotten your "30" hours out of it by then I guess. But let's not kid ourselves by saying that some alternate costumes are what finally going to make everyone who's about to go into the
4th season of SF5, suddenly drop it because that red bull logo is so offensive and makes the game unplayable.
As long as capcom doesn't start deleting your character from the roster, nobody is going to stop enjoying this game over some optional ads or alt costumes. Get your silly ass out of here.