Well, not every character can be a guest character. Those licenses aren't cheap. So the latest FE rep makes sense. Even though there are many FE characters in the game.

I imagined the three fingers/question marks could mean DMC3, Three Houses, No More Heroes 3, or 3 individual character reveals. Although the last one seemed very unlikely.

By the way, Capcom's Jan 16 announcement turned out to be a Style Change option for DMC3 for Switch.

Did Sakurai say people would be surprised?

Fire emblem fans?

I'm sure the contracts can vary depending on the character or company. Cloud is probably worth more than Pac Man for example. But it's very unlikely that they'd allow their characters, stages and music to be sold for a profit, without getting anything in return other than exposure.

Sakurai has at least commented on the cost of music being very expensive.

"In the latest Famitsu column, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate creator Masahiro Sakurai discussed how music was selected for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Sakurai said some series require Nintendo to “pay a lot of money” just to use them in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Due to the high cost of music, Sakurai and his team are restricted to selecting a few tracks for the expensive series."
https://nintendosoup.com/sakurai-buying-music-for-super-smash-bros-ultimate-is-too-expensive-no-such-thing-as-bad-music/

The "some series" and "expensive series" part highlights how some I.P's are more expensive than others.
And I remember in the previous Terry direct that Sakurai said they picked out 50 tracks, expecting SNK to only approve of a few of them. But they told Nintendo it's ok to use all of them.

So that's an example of a company being flexible/generous with their I.P. And sounds like the license for the music was probably a set price, and not on a per-track basis. Considering the very few Final Fantasy tracks in the game, Square Enix were probably the opposite.

Or perhaps Sakurai is an Fire Emblem fan...... 

Half the roster is FE. How many more do you need? I like Xenoblade but I am not asking for Rex. Shulk represents the series fine enough. May as well be 25 marths. Worse than Mario Kart Baby Marios and Metal Marios. It's a really lame way to fill a roster. If you want all 8000 FE characters in an FE game then put it in its own fighting game. BTW I like FE games but this is too much.

Sakurai loved XC 2.So if that was the decisive factor, he would have put Rex into the game.

You just lost my respect!

Half the roster is FE. How many more do you need? I like Xenoblade but I am not asking for Rex. Shulk represents the series fine enough. May as well be 25 marths. Worse than Mario Kart Baby Marios and Metal Marios. It's a really lame way to fill a roster. If you want all 8000 FE characters in an FE game then put it in its own fighting game. BTW I like FE games but this is too much.