> will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC.
I'm not sure this is true, see Factorio as an example. They released Space Age as a "DLC" but for full price and with clear messaging that it's version 2.0 of the game.
To claim Factorio Space Age as counter example would require to show that it was as successful as DLC as it would have been as a new game.
Probably not easy to show...
I think that's impossible to prove and I don't see how it's relevant. The OP claimed that people aren't willing to pay full price unless it's a clear, separate sequel with hype around it. The devs of Factorio proved otherwise with 400k copies being sold in the first week of Space Age's release[0].
