Sakurai said to expect fewer characters. 10 newcomers is fewer than any game in the series. If you include the echo characters, Brawl and Smash 4 still had more.
Sakurai said reveals would be slowing down. A single big reveal with all these characters would make one reveal in 2-3 months.
My biggest issue with that is it ignores the fact that they brought back characters who couldn’t be easily ported from Smash 4, so I think you absolutely have to treat those as newcomers from a developmental standpoint regardless of how much you want to or not.
Ice Climbers were supposedly working in the Wii U version, so I’m willing to give a sort of pass to them. Working doesn’t mean ready for the game necessarily, but they probably got the most work of prior veterans.
Snake, Wolf, Young Link, Pichu, Squirtle, and Ivysaur most definitely do not get that advantage. Those are six newcomers in all reality, or rather additions from Smash 4. And they change the nature of the game significantly.
We have five unique and four brand new Echo fighters, while Echo fighters are undoubtedly counted as newcomers who don’t take a ton of work. Adding the six returning veterans who didn’t have any presence in the Wii U game (to our knowledge at least) already puts us up at 11 additions. So one or two more and we’ll be right at Melee and Smash 4 for unique additions (at least those numbered characters). Adding in potentially five or six Echoes would then mean we have the most additions of any Smash game from the past.
And while I know the returning veterans already exist in concept, Sakurai seems to develop concepts pretty quickly from his past comments. I don’t think the issue in development comes from thinking of a unique move set, I think it comes from the development time needed to fully realize that character, so a unique veteran is of comparable work to a full newcomer I imagine.
That’s all to say; this is why I doubt us getting several more newcomers. We already have 16 additions from Smash 4 to Ultimate counting all the previously absent returning veterans, the Echo fighters, and the full unique newcomers. With all of the additional tweaking and content in the game, he’s already done so much. My prediction has been, for some time, two more Echo fighters and two more unique. That would put us at 20 additions, which is then rivaling Smash 4 AFTER DLC for characters added. That would also put us at 13 new characters which is comparable to Melee since Melee undoubtedly counts all of the clones.
