Does Sakurai only put fighters from IPs that have only one game or lots of games?

[Nathan Productions]

In 2015, when Sakurai was creating the roster for Ultimate, he included the Inklings there because it was new successful IP. But the Splatoon series only had one game at the time. So, does Sakurai only put fighters from IPs that have only one game or lots of games?

 

[DRGN]

Hi. Welcome to Smashboards!

I'm unsure how you navigated to this part of the forums, but this area is for modding Melee. I think the sub-forum you might want is the Ultimate Character Discussion. (I'll go ahead and move this for you.)

As for your question, I think Nintendo/Sakurai mainly tries to add their most popular characters. However, secondarily, they'll look for characters that they believe (or hope) will become popular. For example, Marth and Roy weren't really known in the U.S. when Melee came out, but their franchise, Fire Emblem, was already pretty popular in Japan, and Nintendo already had plans to bring it stateside.