It's not bad, that's part of the Smash pre-release hype. It's always pretty cool to watch that development.

It seems like it's a legitimate new entry, not just a deluxe version of the Wii U game. And it's releasing this year? What kind of blood sacrifices had to be performed over at Nintendo to make this happen?!?!

Couldnt access VGchartz because of this

Nintendo already won e3 :p

The DLC could have been very well been dealt with a small team of developers, freeying up other people to tackle it.As for why Mario kart 8 was chosen to be ported over something like Smash, I really dont know.Maybe they thought it had more potential, maybe the game could have pushed more Switches.But I dont think it matters now.

But as for why I think that this is Smash 5 is:The trailer felt like something new.The way they presented it, in contrast as to how Smash 4 was marketed was much diferent.But there are more solid proofs.In the video, the developers are listed as Nintendo and Hal.If this was a port of Smash 4, Bandai would have needed to be listed there.Plus I think that Nintendo would have wanted to announce this as a port to get this "Bad news" out of the way sooner, to focus on the positive later.

As for the development time, who knows.There are some examples of accelerated development time for sequels.XC 2 was done faster than X for several reasons already discussed.There is also the point to keep in mind that ever since the end of 2014, Nintendo already knew that the Wii U was a failure, and started pushing development of everything related to Switch.And when Kimishima took the job as president, being the business man he is, he must have given priority to the development of the Nintendo biggest IPs, which may explain a smaller development cycle.

And even if Smash 5 uses Smash 4 as a base, who cares?If it feels like a sequel, then it is a sequel.

I. Can't. Wait!!

I would imagine that, unlike past entries, this one is at least being built on the Wii U version, even if it has a lot of new content. Personally, I’m hoping we’ll see all of the stuff from the Wii U/3DS versions on top of the new stuff.

I mean, this is the first time they could conceivably just rip most of their assets STRAIGHT from the previous game, without making the game look dated for the platform.

smash keeps killing the website 

You know what. I was on the fence about this being a port. Not a "straight port", but a port nonetheless with expansions. I was talking to some of the other members about this and they brought up some good points. One of them (Flilix) said that it could be a foundation based Smash 4, but also add other content to technically being a new title. What I gathered from that post he/she meant something like how Splatoon 2 uses the foundation from the previous title plus add new content and such to essentially be a new game. So I guess this would be a sequel to Smash 4 from a logical standpoint.

Several reasons.

First, it's not really four years. Smash 4 was still being worked on with DLC up until 2016, and while in this hypothetical scenario they could have split the dev team between working on a new game and DLC, it'd still be a limited effort for the first two years.

Second, Masahiro Sakurai was so exhausted at the end of Smash 4 development that he quite literally said he was considering quitting video game development. Either Nintendo would have had to somehow convince him to come back basically immediately after that and make anew Smash game, or basically immediately find a new director who could somehow have a new game out within two years of the last one being supported.

Finally and somewhat unrelated to development, this kind of approach to marketing really just doesn't make sense for Smash. Smash, like most fighting games, tends to use a long lead-in period before release to build up hype with new character announcements and trailers. A game scheduled for 2018 would have a grand total of eight or so months to build up hype, and I can't imagine Nintendo shorting such a big hitter with that little marketing time.