I'm just going to be the one to say it. I'm not a fan of this idea at all. When I first saw that ChannelF was the only format, my initial thought was that it was a joke, and that the rest of the formats would be released the next day. But now I'm disappointed to see that's not the case. I get that you want people to branch out and try some of the more obscure formats, but I think ultimately you're just going to disappoint a bunch of people who already had plans for winter chip. For a lot of people, I think they'll just end up not joining at all instead of wasting their time trying to learn a format they don't care about.
I think that if you're going to make a huge change to the winter chip formula like this, you could have at least announced the change in advance through a forum thread or something. This way, people would know what to expect, and the community could decide beforehand whether or not they actually want this change. Instead, now it feels like you've just thrown a huge curve ball at us. "Oh, you wanted to do a MIDI this year? LOL TOO BAD."
I'm sure this comment will get a bunch of haeits, but I don't care. If the rest of the formats aren't "unlocked" soon, then I'm not too optimistic about the turnout of Winter Chip this year, and I certainly won't be entering if that's the case.