Thank you, you just allowed me to realize that I was wrong in some ways, perhaps many. You are absolutely right, sales aren't everything. Ness and Lucas both do deserve to be in Smash. But then, what do sales mean? They can't mean
nothing, right? I mean a large series certainly should get more priority than a small one, right? Kirby certainly deserves more than Fire Emblem and Kid Icarus though,
right? I feel like I just lost how to measure how important a series is
. Forgive me and my idiocy.
You're not an idiot. Sales are
far from an important factor, but you at least had the slightest connection made. Sales themselves don't matter, but sales often go hand-in-hand with popularity. If a series like Mario or Pokemon sells a lot, it's popular. If a series is popular, it's bound to have some popular characters. And when a
character itself is popular, that's what drives its demand for Smash Bros. In other words, if a series is popular and a financial success, that's fine and dandy, but if it lacks characters people are dying to see in Smash, then what difference does it make?
Kirby is a perfect example of that. Aside from Bandana Waddle Dee, just who else is there in the Kirby series? Dark Matter, maybe Magolor... That's about it. The Kirby series has always been popular because of how well it sells, but if it lacks popular characters, then what else does it even have to offer? With Dedede and Meta Knight in Smash Bros., aka by far the most popular characters of the series after Kirby himself, the series honestly has little choices left. Daroach's support is a waste-land, nobody could care any less for Gooey anymore, and plenty of other characters are just one-off Joes and Janes (which, in a series that literally has just as many games as all of Fire Emblem, F-Zero, Pikmin, and Mother
combined, speaks for how obscure they'd be). After BWD, Magolor, and Dark Matter, the Kirby series would struggle to add the 35 or whatever reps it "deserves" because it doesn't have anything close to that number of Smash-worthy characters. No series does, not even behemoths like Mario and Zelda. It's exactly why there's no more outcries for any more Pokemon now that Mewtwo is back, and why Yoshi's Island has no other characters in Smash despite being old and popular enough to justify another character.
Sales are a means to an end. What matters most is the characters themselves. I don't care how many characters someone thinks Kirby deserves, if they add 20 Kirby reps and not a single one of them is the
character I want to see in Smash Bros., then what's the friggin' point?
Data isn't going to determine what DLC is popular,
demographics is.
Let's also not forget that in the end, regardless of how some things are more deserved than others, Sakurai's the one still at the helm of Smash Bros. It's exactly why we have little to no post-2003 Kirby content in Smash Bros. and why Kid Icarus has more characters added in 2 Smash games than Donkey Kong has had in all 4.
.
