I can see Cloud making it in the roster.

True. It is a second party dedicated to creating this game for Sony.  It will be first party, specially if it sells well during the holiday.

Was Ehrgeiz (that "Final Fantasy fighter" on the PS1) 4 player? I have it in my closet but I don't feel like digging it out. Cloud was in that. It's from 1998, I think.

The bolded are probably the most popular out of what you listed. If you took a survey of what people knew about Game Characters Nintendo would always win out, no matter what.

This game's characters doesn't have to be quite as popular as Nintendo's characters. Because we're not expecting this game to be nearly as successful as Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. sells up to 10 million. I'd expect this game to do much less than that. So having less popular characters won't be a big problem.

I'd rather see Sephiroth appear as the final boss :P

There are two viewpoints: mine, and the wrong one.

If you honestly think that copying is a negative aspect with art then you obviously need to take an art history class.

Also the fact that you suggest that Sony's copying Nintendo is "mildly revolting" is nothing short of ludicrous. These are video games people! Not some esoteric art that should be viewed in the highest regard. They are for fun! If you're upset about this, then you're not quite doing it right.

And no, you're not mostly agreeing with me, my only point is that nobody should have any reason to feel offended or alienated about this video game. Anyone who says there is a reason is disagreeing with me.

its Sony so what did you expect?

besides good games get copied

i don't care honestly

Yet ninty characters have more of a notorious presence outside just the games media, parodies, merchandise, songs, comics, mangas,cartoons,etc. Their exposure to those that havent even played the games is notorious and the reference to them when videogames are brought in to other media is pretty common. In melee 2/3 of roster were pretty mainstream(coming from mario, pokemon or zelda franchise),  people either already heard of them or could relate them to something they knew (pichu,jigglypuff, dr mario, young link) without even playing the game first. Sony to have the same appeal as smb needs that more than half of its roster to be really dam recognizable to make pople focus their attention in the game and actually make them interested in knowing the other characters, they cant have more obscure niche characters than popular franchises, neither can they have a lot of 3rd party or it will defeat the purpose of the game. This game will need a clever marketing form sony's part.

I don't see that kind of fanservice for many Playstation characters. Like Deoz said, most Nintendo characters go far from just video games.