I know what the director said but we all know that's bullshit. Sony likely asked for the change which again is strange given how racy a lot of the other costumes are. The *only* reason I can think of is Bunny showed too much skin, nothing else makes sense. Sucks that it was changed but it's clear the dev's hands are tied, there is still more than enough "eye-candy" in the game.
Other things can make sense from a directors choice perspective and people just assume he's not being truthful.
Some examples of things that might make sense:
1)The bunny outfit isn't particularly hard to get but I'm sure is the number one choice of costume for a lot of people after tits and ass. They could have altered it to make the best suit one that requires slightly more effort, like the Black Pearl Nano Suit.
2)When making the alternate NG+ costumes they added details merely for additional palettes to make it not look like just a basic one colour change on a simpler outfit. The Bikini also has slapdash bodypaint like details in much the same way.
3) Most likely in my eyes: the director/Shift Up chose these designs himself knowing from experience with Nikke and Destiny Child that these designs wouldn't get any backlash from ratings boards who would ask them to change things later. Then he was happy and gloated about the fact that there was no regional censored version of the game after.
We can sit here and try and second guess Shift Up but they've explicitly told us these are the designs they wanted in the final game. People have to accept that but he himself knows they won't be convinced.
I fear by bringing this to the wider public limelight it might even backfire for those who like the fanservice rather than help them. The people you should fear are the joe blogs, politicians or ratings boards who might now see things like the Skin suit and be outraged by this videogame. Ratings boards usually just get a description of the contents of a game and trying to explain "it's just skintone" might be a little harder once the public have seen what's in the game. It's not really Sony people should fear, if they were so woke this game wouldn't be a first party published game to begin with. Shift Up/Sony are on peoples side with this but they have to navigate through the shitstorm of the general public and ratings/governance and the controversy and limelight I fear would have the opposite effect that people are hoping for. I honestly think we'd be better off if people just let it go and took this game for the win that it is.