Excuse the phrasing, but in what world do you think any representative of the company is going to say "our current game is defective"?
It might be the "best move" for us, but it certainly wouldn't be the best move for Konami. It wouldn't make any sense for them to do that.
That isn't going to make anyone say "oh look at their honesty, definitely going to buy that game they've just said is broken" (!!!) - all that would potentially come of it is Joe Public going: "The game is bad? I won't buy it then."
Well, I don't envision them simply saying it's defective, or alluding to it in the way you indicate. I imagine them doing something like how they've spun the Master League problems so far: "We're aware it needs more depth, and it's a long-term aim." A suitably polished statement in regard to fouls would be this:
"At the moment, we really like the balance between the flow of the game and the stoppages, but we appreciate that some fans really want to see more fouls. The current collision system works really fluidly, but as we approach implementing serious changes to it in future editions, we are looking into finding a way to tilt the balance in the direction of more physicality, without compromising the flow for which our game has become widely lauded."
Or could say: "three year cycle!"
Either way, it wouldn't be hard to finesse a statement where you acknowledge a defect but don't present it as one. They do that all the time.
I'm sure (but can't find the quote) that someone said, in the video (I've not watched it), there's a hint of the "disconnect" between the guys looking at feedback, and the dev team. That, for me, is something that we (as a community) never consider. You can collate all the best feedback in the world - but you can't force anyone to listen, and this is something that we've been saying long before the days of Asim.
Yeah, that someone was me, I think, just above. It's not in a video (ShoGun chopped up the fuller interview into smaller video clips), but it is in the
fuller SoundCloud link. Sho usefully asks about the feedback process specifically—what sort of feedback does Asim get from the dev team: "Yeah we'll look into this?", "This is the sort of thing we'll put on hold?", "This is a priority?" etc.
Asim said that this has been the problem in the past (it just being unclear), and that Konami as a company are only coming round to a more transparent way of dealing (internally and externally) with feedback in very recent years. It is, he says, part of why he does the job he does, and moreover is why Adam took up a post in Japan. Asim said that it's starting to become a less opaque process: Adam is now coming back with return feedback from the devs. But Asim said it has a way to go, and eventually (by his ideal), he'd want a process where the transparent feedback goes all the way back to the fans asking questions and feeding their criticism to him.
It's definitely worth a listen—
especially for those here who are most critical of Asim and Adam. It's why I generally give him an easier time than most, because it's clear to me he has to retain a helpful and respectful public-facing persona, all while not knowing the fruits of his work on the feedback front.