Consider yourself lucky Nsider isn't around anymore. I would have pointed you in their direction and you'd be beating your head in with a hammer by now.

 The first one for sure, Megaman is the last 3rd party character, that's pretty much guarenteed.

THE ANSWER IS SHEIK

Ryu... or Ken.... Blanka... Dhalsim... E. Honda... GUILE... Zangief... Vega...

I have a very strong feeling it will be Sora from KH. Second choice is Mega Man X.

I seriously doubt that any characters without a strong prior presence on a Nintendo platform will be in SSBB.

I don't think they'll be any new characters announced from 3rd parties. Perhaps we will see some more Ninty characters though. I'm sure they have only offically announced less than a third of the line-up.

I bet, as mentioned before, it all about online stress tests and optimization. It is the only thing that makes sense.

I've heard that Sakurai said two or three 3rd party characters so there's a possible one left. Don't know if it will be able to top Snake and Sonic though.

Well I know what they could do to shatter the sales records: Master Chief =P

Won't happen but would be a huge boost to sales.

 i completely agree.

ninty will choose a character from ninty systems that is very well know.  this leads to golden sun, old ff, mega man, a few other nostalgic not so big titles anymore,  and kh.  golden sun has no gigantic character at least in the us, mega man was confirmed not to be in it (although he deserves it the most), old ff want ginormous (and nearly all famous characters were on ps systems.  sony had the piblishing deal for ff7, so im not sure if se can even make a non sony ff7 game.  thats not a confirmation, just an unknown), and the other titles dont matter much any more.

that leaves kh with sora.  who is huge, and on ninty systems.  this would make me happy.  mega man deserves it, but its gona be sora.

in order to add to that, the ds game was a boost for ninty since most players are ps (although likely ds handheld gamers to be honest).  the fact that the composer lists the sonic composer, mgs composer, and kh composer as the only outside composers is a dead give away.  plus se is giving ninty some big loving, so they probably want some back.