Well I can't speak for how simple or complicated the development process is, but what I meant was the director may have wanted a girl with a certain image -- it involved a dress, skirt, or whatever. Probably after some testing they decided it wasn't worth the effort, or simply couldn't be done as we all know how well their cameras tend to pan.
So you have the option of designing a new look, or going back to square one. Apparently this developer is pretty picky, so they just scrapped the whole idea. No dress, no female -- and we'll go back to what was successful before. Better that than settle with a female design the director does not prefer, and I'm sure they went through many character designs (different clothing) before finally giving the female the boot.
Or it could of been a silly mistake and was scrapped as soon as it was brought up, I'm sure these moment are common as well -- but in this case it sounded like they actually tried.