^You don't think HAL has it in them to create 40(my estimate) characters that are not clones of one another?

I have faith in them.

No, there really was a statement back on the old SSBB boards (before the current site was launched) where Sakurai said that he didn't want any duplicated characters like there were in Melee.  It was said that these character weren't unique only because of the time constraints on Melee.  SSBB has been under no such time constraints.

Yupp, Sakurai had to add clone characters in Melee to bring the game out at christmas. What a luck Nintendo gives him all the time he and his crazy team of Smash Bros. geeks need to create the perfect Smah experience... it´s so great from what we heard so far... from sound to gameplay everything is just awesome

Actually, it is not HAL, but Sakurai and his new team. Forgot about that. Found this interesting note:

http://wii.ign.com/articles/673/673532p1.html 

Sakurai expects a huge staff to eventually be in place at this office for the development of this Revolution update. "To make a Smash Bros. DX class game, you'd want at the least something on the scale of 50 people," he comments, adding that Nintendo will begin hiring employees for the new office via its website shortly.

The new studio hasn't started completely from scratch, though. Nintendo's HAL Lab development studio, Sakurai's former place of employ, has given Sakurai and his fledging crew full access to the development materials and tools from the development of the GameCube Smash Bros..

You might find it surprising that Nintendo would open a new office just for the development of one game. Sakurai doesn't seem as surprised, adding that the investment is an indication of how much is expected of the title. He also adds that a number of former Smash Bros. staff members reside in Tokyo and have joined up on the project's development, necessitating a Tokyo studio.

I think we can expect a lot from them. 

People...Super Smash Bros will not be messed up. It is impossible.

^We were just discussing clone characters. Can they deliver 40 characters without clones?

I'm sure they can. Nintendo has a lot of characters available and they have been with this game a good time, so I say yeah.

Nintendo is throwing countless resources at this game.  They have given Sakurai a team of their best developers to work with, they are giving him all the time he can ask for, they are practically throwing money at the game. Look at the list of composers, that can't have been cheap.  I really can't imagine them screwing this up.

I'm still waiting to hear the Smash Bros medley of Metal Gear Solid...