I'm not trolling. I've been wanting Geno for so long, but after seeing Isaac, Shadow, Rex & Pyra, Chibi Robo, Skull Kid, Ashley, Bomberman, Takamaru, Black Knight, Waluigi, Saki, Akira, and a character from ARMS all losing their chances of being playable doesn't inspire me with the confidence that Sakurai is going to put Geno in. Especially when it seems all he wants to do is just reference him here and there and thinks that's good enough, such as Piranha Plant Classic Mode picture.
Well let's breakdown all these characters and decision when it comes to the ballot, shall we?
Everyone is Here - people don't like characters getting cut, and early on in Smash Bros 4 people already express their grievous that Snake and Wolf didn't come back, and with all the characterst that Smash Bros 4 accumulated it would be a big bummer to see many of them get the boot. So early on Sakurai stated that he wants to bring everyone back with no cuts, which is why Ultimate started out as a port and got molded to be more unique. He didn't have to consult the ballot to see that people wanted no cuts, just look at every other fighting game and how they handle cuts.
Inklings - this was a no brainer character to pick. Splatoon became massively popular as brand new IP on a failing system. Splatoon made a name for itself, everyone was expecting Inklings were going to be in the next Smash Bros by default that when people made bingo cards Inkling was used as the free space. Sakurai was going to put Inklings in regardless of what the ballot said since it was a brand new character from an extremely successful title.
Ridley - this is a character who has been memed so much with comments like "he's too big." Ridley keeps finding himself in Smash Bros discussions that it made sense to chose him as a newcomer. Many people online knows about Ridley and the jokes surrounding him so much that Ridley introduction was him "HITTING THE BIG TIME" and having one of his taunts just showing how big he is. He was chosen from the ballot & his popularity, I give Sakurai that.
Simon Belmont - in interview Sakurai did say that Simon Belmont was chosen from the ballot, but did say when wanting to put in another third party character there was really no other choice but Castlevania due to rich history. When you follow up with the comment "there was really nothing else to pick from besides Castlevania as a third party rep," makes it sound like fan demand had little influence over that decision and it was chosen more as a necessity. Also you can't convince me that Richter Belmont made it that high in the ballot. I don't care what Sakurai said there's no way Richter is a ballot character when so many people didn't even know about him until his reveal happened. I can believe he's popular among the Castlevania fans, but I'm pretty sure Simon and Alucard eclipse Richter's requests.
King K. Rool - Yeah, that was a ballot character that Sakurai didn't know many people wanted it. It helps that he increase the villain side of the roster. I give him that.
Isabelle - she was put in to promote the next Animal Crossing game, which is why a teaser for the next AC came right after he reveal. She was an easy character to make see how she was basically a 50%-60% clone of Villager. She wasn't pick because she did well on the ballot, she was pick because of the right timing for a new Animal Crossing game that was easy to make and her popularity blowing up among the AC community.
Now if we look at all the of the newcomers that made it in and compare it to the ballot we see that 3 out of the current 8 newcomers (including DLC) came from the ballot. That's less than half, and when the last four DLC characters show up it's going to be just 25% of the new characters were ballot characters. We can assume that there are no more ballot characters left when you see who got turn into Assist Trophies and Mii Costumes, and with comments like "These DLC are branching out to new audience and are unexpecting," shows that the ballot is out the window. I don't say these comments like "Sakurai hates the ballot" all willy nilly, I put in the research and look at how this all went before I make these comments. Now I would love to be wrong, but seeing how it all turns out and looking at all of Sakurai's actions and words does convince me that he just didn't like majority of the ballot characters. In the past he said that Assist Trophies was his way of including characters that he didn't believe that couldn't be fighters, and see how many of the ballot characters became Assist Trophies and Piranha Plant was chosen as a fighter instead seems to ring true to his ideals (especially when you consider that we only got three assist upgrades and only one of the three have a unique moveset due to having a brand new game on the Wii and the other two are basically clones).
This comes off as really desperate to paint Sakurai as a bad guy who doesn't listen to the fans and genuinely trying to discredit what was achieved in Ultimate from a fan demand perspective. None of your arguments hold any real weight because you discredit the character choices when they aren't
exclusively picked for being popular on ballots or from the fan perspective. Just because characters have other reasons to make it in beyond fan demand, does not mean that fan demand did not play an important role in their inclusion. Sakurai picks characters for a complex multitude of reasons and pretty much always has. It's pretty rare for there to be singular factor influencing the decision making in Smash as a whole. You can include a character solely because of popular demand, but with a series like Smash that prides itself on being a huge crossover that represents lots of different games, it'd be a mistake to
only focus on that when picking newcomers. There has to be balance to those choices, and there are reasons to add a character beyond fan demand. Let's take a look at your analysis of things:
Everybody is Here - Fighting games cut characters all the time, especially in today's primarily DLC and Microtransaction focused era, to the point where we see fighting games launch with 16 character like Street Fighter V despite such a colorful and varied cast from the past nearly 30 years. Smash was already unique in how few characters the series cut, but that was becoming more and more difficult with each new game. And the few characters that did get cut demanded a huge public outcry from
the fans. Mewtwo was quite possibly one of the largest requests of the Smash 4 era, people have never let go of Roy since Melee, people cried out when Wolf didn't make it back into Smash 4 via DLC, etc. Even the more middle of the road characters like Pichu and Pokemon Trainer had support. These characters showed up all the time in fan polls, so at the very least, they were fan requested by the same polls you are almost definitely using to levy complaints against Sakurai and Smash Ultimate. Ultimate bringing everyone back was an unprecedented move in this era of gaming, and was distinctly demanded by fans of the series. Just because specifically Everybody is Here wasn't a ballot option per se does not mean that you get to discard the fan's influence on such a decision.
Inkling - Just because a character makes sense to include does not mean they were not popular with fans. Again, you're probably using fan ballots to make your conclusions, and they consistently ranked on those as well. But that doesn't even matter. A popular shoe-in is still a popular request and Inkling was undoubtedly one of the most desired newcomers by the community given Splatoon's runaway success. They 100% count towards satisfying fan demand given fan demand was there for them beforehand.
Ridley - I don't really know what you're trying to get at when you're discussing memes and discussion. He's a popular fan choice, no real way around it.
Simon/Richter - Again, Castlevania had some notable support in the past and you miss the point of the Castlevania characters. Sakurai talks about votes for the series being popular (a statistic that would otherwise go missed if you're only laser-focused on specific characters). It wasn't chosen as a "necessity" because such things don't exist in Smash. It was chosen for a web of complicated reasons like rich history, Konami being back on board, and fan demand. Multiple things contribute to characters, but they still operate as satisfying fan demand if they were requested beforehand. Simon takes moves that only Richter does and Richter tends to be the more popular choice of Belmont in Japan over the others given Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. Richter was easy to make and a compromise to the fact that the Belmonts experienced different popularity depending on region.
King K. Rool - Your nihilism is noted on the fact that he increases the villain count... but that has never been all that important to Sakurai in any way, shape, or form. He has never cared about quota except for Pokemon.
Isabelle - She was a really popular, new character from Nintendo. Those tend to get added to Smash and she doesn't serve exclusively as a promotional character just because you want her to. Part of Smash is recognizing other popular IPs and characters that may not traditionally be popular in the eyes of the fan base, but popular elsewhere and including them as well. She's a breakout star that made sense to add. So while she isn't added because of
Smash fan demand, it would be a little foolish to say she was included only because of promotional reasons and ease of making.
You don't even mention the likes of Dark Samus and Chrom who were both specifically touted as popular characters that Sakurai added to fulfill fan requests. Joker isn't entirely just a Sakurai pick either and had fan support on some level. There's so much more fan service in this game than you're making it out to be. Not to mention you're claiming the DLC absolutely won't include anyone with traditionally popular fan support when we don't even know the second character of five. I think you're completely jumping the gun on all of that too.
Stop focusing on the ballot so much, and you'll see that there's a lot more to Ultimate done in the name of Smash fandom than you're implying. And also stop assuming the fan polls are truly indicative of the real ballot when we just don't, and will never, know what any of that looks like. 1.8 million votes is a lot of data and information to work with. Plus, as I said earlier, there are lots of reasons to choose characters. Fan demand can be the sole qualifier for a couple of characters, but it should never be exclusively relied upon. You'd miss so much if you did (including beloved fan communities on this site that don't poll particularly well).
Still hoping for DLC...
