I come wielding my "Hater Hammer".
No changes, thank you very much, for these reasons:
1. Sonic is simple enough to support... When you grew up in the hay-day of NES, SNES, Genesis, etc, there was a kind of competitive spirit between who was cooler and which system was better: Mario or Sonic? Naturally, after a series of unfortunate events, Sega is out of the console making picture and develops a lot of games for their former rival, but there hasn't ever been such a perfect arena for Mario and Sonic to duke it out. People have had it in the back of their minds for ages, and its finally going to happen. Besides, Sakurai himself alluded to the fact that Sonic was the most requested 3rd Party character... What more do you need to merit a playable slot? I wouldn't dare pull Sonic out for any other character, not even one of my obscure favorites that don't stand a chance.
2. Snake has my support for a slightly different reason... First of all, I support him because of Kojima likely being one of the main reasons for getting the idea of 3rd party participating characters into the heads of the Smash team. For the haters saying that its lame that Hideo "practically begged" for Snake to be in Brawl, I say that you both don't know the grounds for said "begging" other than a translation of Sakurai during an interview, AND that its not as though they added him at the last minute because of said begging; the first trailer featured him in the most surprising way ever. Next, in regard to people saying "He's not suited for Brawl" and "he's too offbeat compared to the other characters" or "his design is so far from the others", well... Those are all reasons that make a character suitable for Smash. What kind of game would it be if it was limited to one kind of character? Imagine Samus not being able to get in because her games are full of darker themes and creepy aliens, or having all Pokemon and Mario characters because they are so colorful and friendly looking. Being offbeat is PERFECT, the more obscure the better, and since Hideo was the first known to actually come forward and make it apparent that he would want his character a part of the Smash roster, Snake deserves the space more than anyone else who comes running in after the fact. And those who say Snake is gonna play like crap... Have you seen this new 5 minute video? Snake is mixed in somewhere in the middle, but the video ends with a quick footage of Link vs Snake one on one... I have a sneaking suspicion that Snake might be controlled by a computer in the battle necessary to unlock him.
If you haven't seen said video, I highly recommend it. Here it is at GameTrailers:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/29932.html