Are you satisfied with the Smash Bros character roster?

[Aielyn]

BasiltheBatLord said:

Aielyn said:

The fact that Ice Climbers have been in two Smash games, in both cases as a starter, suggests that they're rated sufficiently highly by Nintendo to remain in the series.

i have never been under the impression that Nintendo picks characters in Smash or that Nintendo's opinion of a character or franchise significantly influences Sakurai's character decisions.

i kind of think that people are under the impression that Sakurai's goal with succesive Smash titles is to just "add more".  Sakurai has said several times that that is what he wants to avoid with future titles.  i.e. it seems to me like a lot of people have been assuming from the beginning that all, or almost all characters from Brawl will return which i don't think would be accurate.

Who here has assumed that all of the characters will return?

Indeed, I'm expecting Wolf, Snake, and possibly Lucas to be dropped. I could also see ROB and/or Meta Knight being dropped, although less likely than Lucas. Also note that Pokemon Trainer was dropped in favour of just Charizard.

And I know that Sakurai's decisions aren't made solely based on Nintendo's opinion of a character, but it's certainly a factor - if Sakurai said he wanted to leave Mario out, Nintendo would say no. More importantly, Sakurai chose to have Ice Climbers as starters. It'll have been based on Nintendo's view of the characters, but starter vs unlockable decisions would be up to Sakurai, and he made that choice.

The only way I could see Ice Climbers not making it is if he couldn't get them done in time, in which case I'd expect to see them made into DLC characters (based on recent rumours).