What are you even talking about? Tons of people were wanting Rex/a XB2 rep character as DLC since like 2018. They didn't "move on to different wants" or "would rather wait to see them in the next game".
You misunderstand.
DLC is for the dream picks to happen while base game is for expected characters, with expected essentially meaning expanding on older 1st party titles or adding new 1st party titles. This is what Smash 4 established. Obviously they mix it up a bit, but in general this is the case.
Let's look at the base roster of Smash 4 vs the DLC, shall we?
Base Game:
DLC:
Base game Smash 4 is all expected inclusions outside of Megaman and to an extent Little Mac. AC is very successful and even with Sakurai's previous views on it in Smash it was inevitable, having characters that represent the success of the Wii, adding the last bits of popular Mario characters, a new Pokemon, expanding on the success of Kid Icarus Uprising, Bamco working on the game, expanding on the recent surge of FE success, and a couple of retro picks. Like I said, only Megaman is really out of the ordinary here.
DLC for Smash 4 is a wild ride, with only one really big low. First off, with the exception of Dr. Mario, characters once cut never really seem to return. So when not only does the most requested veteran return, but also two more, it was a huge deal. Mr. Street Fighter himself is a huge deal, especially since people thought Ryu and Megaman were in competition for a spot (think of this like B&K and Steve after B&K got in), Cloud speaks for himself, Corrin was a very bad choice and Bayo was very much loved even if Nintendo did a bad job at explaining why she 'won' the ballot. Still, if you asked people back in the Smash 4 days, all but one of these were thought impossible to some degree and they happened.
Now, let's talk about how Ultimate has failed in this regard. Rather than making dreams come true with DLC, Ultimate has been fixing problems with the base game through DLC.
Who got into the game via base game?
, not counting the veterans since I didn't do that for Smash 4 either. So, let's talk about this. EDIT: I normally don't ahve to point out obvious things, but just to be safe, not counting veterans is in regards to both base games, and Plant was meant to be base game.
First off, let's talk about the good here, which really only starts and stops at how big a little over half these requests are. I don't think we really need to talk about that either, as it's been done to death, but let's just cut that corner and say that up to Isabelle was a big deal and after that...not so much. Now, to the bad.
First off for the bad, this is two characters less than Smash 4 in terms of brand new characters in the base game. They pseudo make up for this with six returning vets, but remember that these are all older character with very little changes to them so they don't bring anything new, thus their only significance IS their nostalgia factor. Also, many of these older characters are very similar to others we've had for a while: one third of Pokemon Trainer was in Smash 4, Pichu is basically Pikachu, Young Link was Toon Link before Toon Link, and Wolf pulls very hard from Fox and Falco which was why he got into Brawl in the first place.
Secondly...it's actually less than that in terms of 'new' characters with all the echos. Smash 4 only introduced two echoes, being Dark Pit and Lucina, however Ultimate brought Daisy, Richter, Chrom, Dark Samus and Ken. I know that I personally tend to keep them as their own characters, but in terms of bringing freshness to the game I can't deny that they take so much from their base that it's clear they were done to pad the roster due to time constraints. That would mean that, in fairness, Smash 4 added 12 COMPLETELY new characters while Ultimate only added 8.
In terms of adding new 1st party IPs and expanding the old, Ultimate can only really claim to focus on expansion. Mario got two new reps, Metroid got two, FE got one, DK got one, and Pokemon got one. the only new IP we got was Splatoon with the Inklings. It's very likely we would have gotten ARMS and XBC2 in the base game, but since Ultimate began development so soon and had no chance to delay, we kinda got short changed there. It's also likely that Byleth would have been in the base game if Tres Casas didn't get delayed, but even so if Sakurai got to delay Ultimate for roughly a year, we could have gotten Byleth, Min Min and Pyra/Mythra + Rex in the BASE GAME.
Now, let's look at DLC.
thus far.
You would think that with all the veterans returning in the base game, the DLC window would be open for just really big picks, right? Also, with how Smash 4 DLC went and how base Ultimate went, you would think DLC would have catered to big fan requests, right? Well unfortunately, that's only slightly true instead of mostly.
My first point here is that all the DLC falls under some sort of marketing or promotion to benefit both Nintendo and the other company, to capitalize on money one way or another, other than B&K since they don't currently have a way to make big money off of that because MS doesn't like nostalgia money I guess.
That isn't to say that some of these characters didn't have sizable request, but rather that many of these characters had dollar signs as the bigger reason for their inclusion, something that Joker, Hero, Steve and Sephiroth fall into the most because no matter how beloved they are the money companies can make from them just flat out supersedes any demand. In other words, even if these four had little to no demand at all, they would have been here. This is something Sakurai himself has expressed recently with Steve and Kazuya where he has been pressured into including them from what basically boils down to Big Nintendo, which is similar to Corrin's inclusion in Smash 4 but on a larger scale.
So, when you setup a pattern that DLC is what makes dreams happen with only the occasional mishap, but then only one request from that long list makes it into the DLC, you have an issue with that big part of your community.
Then, we have the issue with the 'spackling'. Once we get to Byleth, it's starts to become clear that holes in the base game are being filled, but this could arguably have first began with Hero depending on what you believe from the rumor mill. Basically, from Hero/Byleth on, we have spots that are starting to consistently make up for things that didn't happen in the past, and yet none of them are big time requests from Ye Ol' Smash Community. Now, if you were one of the 5% who thought that ARMS and XBC2 had the perfect chance to show up as DLC, congrats to you, but the majority of this community thought they missed their chance with the timing for the base game and based off Sakurai's words. What that meant to most of us was 'Oh, well I guess they show up for Smash 6 then, because DLC is where the good **** starts to happen' only to then have these characters show up in DLC and push out the chances of that many hopes and dreams coming to fruition.
Hopefully, that explains what I meant a bit better, even if I did go pretty deep into it.
lol 100% agree. The most scathing load of bullcrap was Sakurai's excuse "BuT tHe TiMiNg!" and then he throws in Byleth when their game hadn't even released yet. Just be honest and say that they weren't a priority for Nintendo at the time. You know it. They know it. We all know it, so let's just stop playing hide the ball. It was at least nice that Nintendo recognized enough demand for XC2 to follow up. Wish they'd listen a bit more for other franchises...
And yeah, the original designs for Pythra were pretty much in your face screaming "FEAST YOUR EYES ON THE SEXY WAIFUS!" It was like a horny 13 yr old boy designed those costumes.
I can tell you from experience that XC2 was a pretty awesome game regardless of all the fanservice. Sure, the costumes were a bit in your face, but the story, world and combat were fairly sharp and I do feel that Pythra was a good inclusion for Smash. The Xenoblade franchise as a whole deserves more representation. (Certainly more than freaking FE.)
So I think we are flaming Sakurai here without having a non-biased understanding of the time from of releases. This also gives more credit to the rumor from insiders being that Byleth was originally planned for base game, but I'm not here to talk about that as much as time frames.
So, let's look at these time frames: Ultimate started early 2016 and released at the end of 2018. ARMS released in June 2017 and XBC2 in Dec 2017. Tres Casa originally planned to release in 2018, with it's announcement first being Jan 2017. It would then get delayed twice, from 2018 to 2019 and from I believe March 2019 to July 2019.
Now, consider that Sakurai doesn't have an issue working on a character who's game hasn't launched yet but typically the game will be launched before Smash does. This has been made evident by Greninja in Smash 4 as well as Corrin, as well as the pressure put on Sakurai to agree to Corrin despite the game not being released outside of Japan yet.
So, where does this put Min Min, P/M + R and Byleth?
Well, for Min Min and P/M + R, they both came out in 2017. If they missed the mark, that means that Ultimate's roster was already zoned in for the most part by mid 2017, which makes sense since the game was rushing to get out the door by the end of 2018. This means that by the time they could have given a playable build to Sakurai for him to test as thoroughly as he tends to do, they already had a lock on the roster...and remember that Plant was intended for base game but they just ran out of time to put him in, so it's clear production was very rushed.
Byleth has two different timelines here based on whether you believe they were intended for base game or not. The first timeline is that Byleth missed the cut just like the other two, and the game got delayed because it just needed to be to be a good product. The second timeline is that Byleth was being enforced on Sakurai to be included in the base game despite him not really having the time to included them because Big Nintendo is still pushing FE, and that Sakurai wouldn't have done it normally but Nintendo didn't give him a choice, but then the game got delayed to be a better product which meant Sakurai could no longer play the game early to get an accurate portrayal of the game and the character.
If the second timeline is true, then it's likely Tres Casas originally would have released before Ultimate did and Byleth would have been revealed to be in Ultimate before it's release, which honestly is a bit of a better timeline because not only does it still capitalize on the Tres Casas hype shortly after it's release (so just like what actually happened, but a year earlier) but it would have been for base game and been much more accepted by the community instead of as DLC which traditionally grants more big wishes.
Fun fact: did you know that delaying Ultimate until Dec 2019 could have had the same effect? If Sakurai had been allowed to have more time and creative freedom, we could have actually seen Min Min, Byleth and P/M + R in the base game which leaves three open spots in the DLC. More over, who knows how much better WoL could have been, among a number of other additions and improvements.
But remember, Nintendo has been bossing Sakurai around with Smash since essentially it's inception, but it's been pretty bad ever since Brawl. Never forget that N64 Smash originally got rejected but Iwata never told Sakurai about it, that Melee came out in 2001 when Smash 64 was 1999 (imagine that development hell of a rush!), that Sakurai was threatened by Iwata to help make Brawl or they would have to release Melee with netplay for Wii instead, that Sakurai had to make Smash 4 for two different system at essentially the same time that had VASTLY difference capabilities, and that Ultimate started before we even got all the DLC for Smash 4 in early 2016 and he had to push that out in 2018.
So...if you wanna trash someone about Smash, make sure you point your fingers in the right direction, as it's never been Sakurai to blame for anything other than making Brawl so anti-competitive.