For seven years, Smash was a Nintendo IP celebration, until it wasn't. For 14 years, it was a celebration of video game characters prominent on Nintendo consoles,  until it wasn't. For 18 years, it was a Japanese video games IP celebration, until it wasn't.

So on my side, I have the fact that there are no hard rules for which characters get into Smash because each new entry has broken one of those rules that people like yourself say will never be broken. Oh, and funny you mention Sakurai, the same man who said Ridley can't be a playable character because he's too big and an accurate portrayal is important to him: https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/11/19/why-ridley-isnt-playable-in-smash-bros

“I definitely know that Ridley’s a much-anticipated name for fans, but if we made Ridley as a fighter, it wouldn’t be Ridley any longer,” Sakurai told IGN in an email interview. “It’d have to be shrunk down, or its wings reduced in size, or be unable to fly around freely.”

Here is a match in the very next entry in the series featuring someone playing as Ridley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_brLpOF5H0Y

And his opponent is playing as Olimar...

“Providing accurate portrayals of characters is something I want to pay ample attention to,” he continued. “If I don’t stick to that thought, then we’d have to lower the quality or break the balance of the game. Something that goes way off spec could break the entire game.”

“Instead of going through a lot of very convoluted hocus-pocus to make Ridley a fighter, I figured it’d be better to keep Ridley as it currently is, the correct way, and have it feel like a truly threatening presence,” Sakurai explained. “There are other icons, too, like Metal Face and the Yellow Devil, which help effectively portray each of their world settings. They go a long way toward deepening the game world, and I think it’s been fun to experiment with.”

Thank you for the well wishes, by the way. Hopefully we both live a long and blissful life, so that you one day can enjoy a fine plate of crow.

I don't care, but I want Sailor Moon! =P

I don't want any non-gaming characters in Smash. It's supposed to be a celebration of GAMING, not non-gaming characters. Besides, Goku's been in enough fighting games himself that nothing is lost by having him not in Smash Bros.

Sakurai have stated that he will only put characters that originated from a video game into Smash, Goku originated in a manga so he will never be put into Smash, unless Sakurai changes his selection criteria.

I sincerely doubt he ever will. The closest he's ever gotten to adding a non-gaming character is Sora, and that's primarily because of the Disney connection.

If we put that way, Sora would be the second time after Little Mac

Come again?

That's not the same. Punch-Out existed as an arcade game without Mike Tyson.

Lol, we need another Microsoft character: Crash Bandicoot. I don't care about Spyro, but if they offer it...