There is nothing controversial about Cloud in Brawl.

Some people feel he doesn't deserve it? By comparison, how often has Solid Snake appeared on a Nintendo system? Maybe just a little more than Cloud and Metal Gear Solid 3D wasn't even out when Brawl was released. People need to be a little more open-minded. Cloud is an iconic character in gaming and I'm sure quite a few Smash Bros. players have also played FFVII. Besides, the FFVII remake could very well end up coming to NX as well as PS4.

The original metal gear games before Metal Gear Solid were on the NES and the remake of Metal Gear Solid.

To recap:

- A crappy port of the original MSX Metal Gear.

- A mediocre non-canon sequel to the crapy port.

- Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, another non-canon game but still recieved good reviews.

- Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes

- Metal Gear Solid 3D

So Nintendo's systems got two original Metal Gear games and both are non-canon and one of them sucks. Yet fans had no complaints when Snake appeard in Smash. 

Cloud in Brawl definitely would be controversial considering that game doesn't support DLC and came out 7 years ago.

I think it would be nice if they put the original Playstation version on both the 3DS and Wii U (and XBox One). Why not?

Cloud was in Kingdom Hearts : Chain of Memories, Re : Coded, Itadaki Street

Hint at FF7 Remake for NX?

Hint at FF7 Remake for Arcades?

Cloud hasn't been on a Nintendo platform yet, but I think that MyNintendo is going to use Cloud