Again DLC does not require the whole studio to top it off S4 is developed and handled by Namco not HAL who are developing here you still haven't even addressed the XBC2 example either, if Monolith can do it with that game why can't it happen with Smash you've offered no concrete counter to this at all.

Sakurai blah blah yeah sure mate the same Sakurai who said DLC would not be in Smash 4 because he was exhausted guess how that turned out and developing an engine is a lot of work its one of the longest parts in game development this why companies like Epic have made a business by licensing out their engines.

Mario Odyssey announced itself in January and launched in October 10 months later and is going to be the top selling 3D Mario even a game like Fallout 4 launched 5-6 months after being announced so what you're saying here is false about needing to be announced a year in advance. Franchises like these don't need a lot of time for announcements because their names hold so much weight they'll generate hype no matter what.

Sequels can feel that way, be it metroid prime 2,3 or smash bros melee or pokemon x or call of duty something.

Every smash has been quite similar to the previous one. They look better and have more characters and maybe some new modes. So its going to be similar no matter what and thats fine by me. Now with the online thing being a thing more than with wii or wii u they can and propably will release some content after launch, be it free or payid (as they already did with wii u, but even more this time). System akin to splatoon could even work.

I've been doing a bit of research into what sakurai has done between each smash game. Between 64(1999) and melee(2001) he didnt make anything. Very short gap. Also 64 is the only smash game to release so late into a consoles life.
Between melee and and brawl (2008) he made Kirby: nightmare in dream land (2002), Kirby air ride (2003), Kirby and the amazing mirror (2004) as a advisor, meteos and another game in (2005) as a designer. Leaving a gap of less than 3 years for brawl.
Between brawl and wiiu/3ds(2014) he made kid icarus uprising(2012), leaving a gap of over than 2 years for smash wiiu/3ds.
Now for wiiu/3ds and switch(2018), we have a gap of 4 years where he has made nothing. The DLC ended in early 2016 which still gives a similar time of over 2 years.
In conclusion this is very much within the time frame for a smash game to be released.

Sounds good :D

Nice detective work!

I find it odd that people think a smash bros game would take such a huge amount of time to make. When you compare games like breath of the wild and gta v which are huge games with big changes in gameplay with previous instalments, it's seem ridiculous to say that smash would take as long to develop.

Also just so people know I'm not saying with certainty that this isn't a port. I'm just saying that it is within the realm of possibility that it is a new game.

If dev started in early 2016, then that's not even a "short" dev time anyways. It would be nearly 3 years of development by the time it comes out.

ahhh Sony is shaking

Right...same font, same letter angles, same little arch on the bottom word to make space for a game specific title. It's pretty much exactly the same wordmark that Smash 4 used, albeit with fifteen or so minutes in MS Paint to shift some of the effects. This may not be particularly indicative of anything, but every logo change from previous games featured at least one noticeable difference in the way the letters were angled, from Melee's completely flat wordmark to Brawl missing the little indent at the top that the Wii U one has.

Bigger point is, it's not like the logo used in the Switch trailer was some time consuming task that demonstrates a desire to heavily rebrand as a new game. It's just a minimalist version of the Wii U one.

I'd disagree. The font is quite clearly the one used in for Smash 4. Brawl's logo lacks the downward curve on the "Smash" part of the logo that Smash 4's has, and the bottom letters again lack the same angle.

See how Smash 4's is much more curved?

Now compare that to this:

The font is MUCH more similar to Smash 4's than Brawl's; it's just a minimalist version. The only thing that makes it more "Brawl" like is the way the "o" is shaped.

Yes, I very clearly stated in my post that it does not take the whole studio to create DLC. I never said it wasn't; we're not in disagreement there. What I said is that it would make the initial phase of development for Smash 5 limited, as you would have, at the very least, Sakurai and many of the other Smash leads involved with Bandai Namco. My point is simply that the studio would not have, as you said, a full four years to develop an entirely new game. They would have one and a half full years, and then two years with key staff pulled away. That isn't something Smash has done recently. Yes, other studios, like Monolith, have been able to do it for other games. It probably would be possible, even if you ignore Sakurai's reluctance to keep working on Smash after he finished 4. But the point is that it doesn't fit Nintendo's recent history; not that it's impossible. No one can prove an impossibility, but I can demonstrate that it's unlikely given the approach that Nintendo's taken in the past.

Mario also doesn't tend to rely on having a lot of time to advertise different characters, like Smash and other fighting games do. Even then, SMO was at the very least teased in October of 2016, giving itself a full year to build hype. And that's for a game that only really needs to advertise Mario; Smash has many more characters to get to, at least assuming there's a sizable number of newcomers like there are for most games.