A Peculiar Question on Smash's development

[Foxus]

Given how Sakaurai bowed at the end of the direct, thereby signaling the end of Smash 4's extended development possibly?), it leads me to quite a peculiar question. Could Smash continue to develop without Sakurai's direct involvement? In general, you would need the go on Nintendo whether or not a directly related, or second party would develop characters/modes to be DLC.

Say we wanted to release Wolf finally. We could model Wolf starting with the Fox model, and go from there.

So, what would your say be? Could extensions be done without directly having "Masashiro Sakurai" on the label?