That's a terrible marketing strategy though. "Oh, you'll know all the features and characters when the game is out". Regardless if you think the internet or technology has made us "spoiled", that doesn't mean you can just do it "old school" and expect that to work, example: Blockbuster. You have to change and evolve with the times if you want to be successful, especially when it comes to something related to technology.We didn't even know the full roster of MK9 until the game was in someone's hand IIRC. If people know of the game but don't wanna get it until they know the full roster then they can just buy the game a week later. The internet and recent wave of media/gaming has made us incredibly spoiled when it comes to knowing everything a game has to offer as, back in the day, we didn't know even ha;f the roster sometimes before a game came out. Even unlocking characters is frowned upon now-a-days which was a standard back then.
And unlocking characters via in game is frowned upon by the tournament players because it usually takes a long time to do, and it's saved to the hard drive. Meaning unless that specific console has unlocked that character, you're going to have to manually do it at tournaments, which is incredibly time consuming.