Good to see you again my friend. I miss a lot of the familiar faces I'm sure we lost both due to the lockdown of the thread as well as to general loss of hope, so it's good to see one again. I'm doing well outside of speculation, but within speculation it's been a bit of a pain as if you say something outside of the norm you get ratio'd or whatever new stupid **** the hivemind does nowadays.
Speaking of which, good to see
QQS
is still here, the legend himself still holding out hope. I'm glad to see someone else who still has big faith in our blue puppet boi.
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To finish my take on the subject, you can argue what you want about polls and the like, but it doesn't change the fact that we have proof Geno fans were around in decent numbers and clearly voted in the ballot. How do we know this?
- Geno has been a name mentioned in all parts of the Smash community for decades now, and we have evidence that shows people were still talking about him around the Smash Ballot. Of course, other characters got a lot more hype during that time, but that doesn't change the fact that we were still up and at 'em during those months. This clearly means the Geno fan base got in votes during the ballot, though how many we may never know.
- Geno's costume got in Smash 4. I don't need to say more, but I will to elaborate: we all know our lovable puppet is niche in comparison to a lot of other mainstream characters that people both want and don't want in Smash. Thus, the fact that he got that kind of recognition after so many years of nothing means that Sakurai and his crew felt they had a justified reason to make that costume, and the only reason would be that we showed our support in enough numbers that Sakurai and his team felt it was important to show us he was listening but that he was limited in what he could provide. Don't forget that its still the only costume to THIS DAY that got an introduction like it was a character.
- Taking that last part of the special Geno costume introduction and tying it in with the fact that even though the interviewer brought up Geno, Sakurai felt the need to say what he did about it. Sakurai was the one who said Geno still gets a lot of requests. I'm not sure how much more definitive you can get: the creator and head hancho of Smash let out of his own mouth that the character we want still gets a lot of requests. And guess what Sakurai and his team just had happen? A ballot in which fans could vote for who they wanted, and they could go through that data and find the most requested characters. This interview is also many months after that finalization of the ballot, and thus they most definitely had all the information and time they needed to come up with results.
I'm not sure how much clearer I can make it than that: We didn't have K. Rool push and numbers, but we clearly came in at enough numbers across the globe that Sakurai felt the need to give us something despite that ballot CLEARLY always being for the next game, and it was big enough numbers that Sakurai felt the need to give us a special intro and details on his history of wanting to make the character playable.
We didn't miss our chance, we just weren't as big as some others, but we hit bigger than most of you think we did. Also
Icewolff92
your potential insinuation is actually ridiculous: what is the point of saying 'I've been trying to get this character in since Brawl since I think he fits well, but it just hasn't happened yet.' as PR speak? PR speak doesn't need to go into details like that when it isn't needed. All he had to do was say 'He's still a bit popular, so I included the costume.' and that would cover the entire question. The term PR Speak itself implies saying things that don't really say a lot but still sound good at the end of the day, which is not what happened in that interview at all. Also, implying that Sakurai would lie to us about something like this for absolutely no reason with no such history of doing so is not only faulty logic, but downright insulting to Sakurai. I would encourage you to not let your own negative outlook push you to such nonsensical conclusions.
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Going a bit deeper into a topic that many people have covered already but it seems our fan base needs a reminder on how good our boi really has it right now, look back into the Smash 4 days and see who got costumes.
Everyone and their auntie and uncle points at the Smash 4 costumes like Inkling, K. Rool and Chrom and pointing to them being playable in Ultimate and can say "Huh, that means others like Lloyd, Isabelle and Geno have good chances to be playable too!" and while that isn't the wrong way to go about it I think it's very surface level, like the top portion of the Iceberg Meme. What it doesn't do is look at WHY Smash 4 got those costumes in the first place, which is popularity.
See, for the same reason those characters are playable in Ultimate is the same reason they got costumes in Smash 4: people REALLY love them. Now you may say "Why weren't they playable in Smash 4 then?" and the obvious answer is this: Sakurai knew that he would be working on a new game, combined with the fact that there already were no plans for extensive DLC. See, many people seem to forget that Ultimate was Sakurai's final wish from Iwata before his passing, and Iwata hung on until July of 2015. This would mean that Sakurai had some sort of plans to make Ultimate prior to 2015, but we know he started development around Cloud's Reveal in Nov 2015, which means he knew he was working on the next Smash for the next console for sure sometime between July and Oct 2015.
You may wonder the importance of this, but when you add the above with the fact that Mewtwo was originally going to be the only DLC but things changed in development and the fact that nearly half the DLC are veterans that were easy to port over, it's clear DLC was never intended and was never going to be as big for Smash 4 as it has been for Ultimate. So, since you can't go into DLC as hard, but you have a ballot that shows how much fans love certain characters and you already have data for some gathered by experts, what do you do? Well, you make Mii Costumes of those characters instead! It makes you money of course, but it also shows the fans that you are paying attention to what they are saying even if you can't just give them characters, and then you can also gauge the response to the costumes to make a final decision on whether to attempt to make them playable in the next game.
Now there are some exceptions to this thus far, Takamaru and Tails/Knuckles being the ones that stand out.
Takamaru is easy to explain: he's niche, kinda like Geno, but has even less pull and not much appeal due to I believe lack of localization and new entries. However, he also came with both a costume and an AT back in Smash 4 to have both return in Ultimate, so he's a bit of a different story.
Tails and Knuckles are also easy to explain: Knuckles went from a costume and stage element also getting an Assist Trophy. That of course doesn't rule him or Tails out, and I DO think that Sega would obviously consider them, but I'm not sure Nintendo has any interest. Between Sonic being playable, having two stages, Shadow and Knuckles ATs, Tails and Knuckles Mii Costumes, and also figuring in Spirits...maybe Nintendo thinks they have done enough to represent the Sonic franchise in Ultimate despite the requests and want to focus on other franchises. They capitalized on Joker while P5 was still hot, but maybe this is the time to go back for fan demand and get another Sonic character? Although if less-credible leaks are to be believed, they apparently want to gun for Phantasy Star now.
This is also one of the reasons why I keep begging you guys not to stop showing support for Geno. Sure, you can be down about him for whatever reason if you choose, but keep talking about wanting him on social media and in person. Why? Because all the Tails and Knuckles fans have mostly moved on to talking about Robotnik, and in my opinion Sega is a huge contender for another rep, and I think they are setting themselves up for a self-fulfilling prophecy: in other words, since they convinced themselves Tails/Knuckles/Shadow can't get in they decide to root for Robotnik instead of the Sonic character they REALLY want, and then Sakurai, his team, Nintendo and Sega may see this shift without the context and think people WANT Robotnik and thus they make him playable instead of who the fans REALLY wanted. In the same vein, this is why I tell you to still be loud about wanting Geno in Ultimate, because for the sake of future content we need to make sure they don't mistake our decline in activity after the re-release of the costume to be satisfaction.
nintendoeverything.com
