While I definitely agree that most Smash characters have some kind of marketing strategy to them, especially when it comes to DLC, there are several outliers that kill that notion as an absolute. A few easy examples would include Duck Hunt and Banjo Kazooie. Neither of them were a direct advertisement of a recent IP movement, and in the case of BK, they were straight up owned by a competitor without any hopes of giving Nintendo anything beyond fan wish fulfillment and smash DLC sales. Granted, you could argue that fan wish fulfillment is a marketing strategy unto itself, but I would much rather have that as a motivation over straight up shill picks cuz "muh new games". I guess if you want to split hairs, Smash Bros itself is basically one huge advertisement but inclusions from Brawl, Sm4sh and Ultimate suggest that fan input and Nintendo history still play a significant role in who gets added to the game.
As for Miyamoto and the puritanic Mario sentiment, I thought it was already generally established that it's definitely a real thing as proven by the increasing lack of creativity when it came to Mario RPG characters. The most recent installments of Paper mario, for example, don't even allow party members to vary beyond simple palette swaps of generic Mario enemies. To my knowledge, Rosalina was the last original recurring Mario character to be added to the franchise and that was Mario Galaxy back in 2007. I appreciate what Miyamoto has done for the Mario franchise, but I think Nintendo is well over due for some new blood to keep things fresh. The guy is 68 for goodness sake. He's earned a good retirement.
Well, badmouthing Banjo isn't accepted in this community so I'll keep my analysis of his inclusion to myself, but I don't think it was as much a tip of the hat to fans as we imagine, and in fact is another case of serendipity that we have misread. Appealing to the fans
is a good marketing strategy but I think that it, unfortunately, is not long term sustainable nor does it pull in the kind of revenue necessary to keep closing deals on character and music inclusion in a party game that happens to have a sizeable but ultimately insignificant competitive following, and really, I have to wonder not just beyond whether or not every inclusion has been advertisement in some way, if us old bloods just aren't the ones being advertised to at all anymore. I've mentioned before that one of the reasons appealing to fans isn't a good long-term solutions is that we're already here. Nintendo has and can continue to wrong us by providing less than stellar remakes, shallow new experiences, and general poor consumer relations, but we stick around. We complain until we're blue in the face that this online service isn't worth $20 a year but most of us have it. We are underwhelmed by a product that fails to live up to our expectations yet we come back for the next in hopes that it will be better, and every now and again, we're hit with something that reminds us why we're fans in the first place and it keeps us coming back with hope instead of cautious optimism.
I think in Smash we see a little terrarium type emulation of that, but the days of needing to keep us hooked are long over. They gave us Brawl and then gave us characters like Mega Man and Little Mac in Smash 4, and then Ridley, Simon and K. Rool in Ultimate, and even Banjo in the DLC, but those are just those little somethings that remind us why we're here, that glimmer of hope that has us hanging onto their every announcement, tuning in and filming ourselves reacting to the next announcement or even the announcement of an announcement. The whole of it, though, that's not for us anymore.
It's quite tiresome to live in that cycle, if I'm being honest. The only thing that makes it bearable is to complain endlessly about it and hope to be wrong every now and again.
As for Miyamoto and the Mario franchise, I agree that there has been some degree of standardization over the years, mostly just in getting designs hammered out as "this is what [x] looks like every time", which there's nothing really wrong with that. I think the funniest thing I've realized about the complaints, especially in regard to Paper Mario about "generic Mario enemies" is that Paper Mario partners have
always been generic Mario enemies wearing special clothes or being palette swapped, maybe both sometimes. Literal hat goombas, Koopas wearing some clothes, a special looking bob-omb... The most unique party members ever in Paper Mario were Flurry and Vivian, and while one of those is definitely a fan favorite, the other is... kind of... uh... A mistake. If Miyamoto is truly guilty of anything regarding these characters it's two things that have been consistent about him pretty much his entire career:
1. Function is more important than form and in fact, form is modified to enhance function.
2. Always press forward and make something new.
We're just in an unfortunate cycle where the fans want to relive the same magic over and over, get to know the same characters over and over, and the creators would rather try out new ideas and see what works, what doesn't, and then improve on what works - sometimes that even means throwing out what worked to see if something new will work in its place. Obviously we all think it'd be much more beneficial for them to take that testing ground to a new spinoff series, but Nintendo knows they can sell Paper Mario to us no matter what they try, and now that it's hit rock bottom they'll most likely throw us that aforementioned gem and start the cycle all over again. I'm not of the mindset that they intentionally set out to sterilize Paper Mario, I'm more of the belief that they cut corners and worked out the bare minimum of what pushes a game off the shelves and into hands. It's a low risk, high reward attitude with a spinoff series that probably hasn't been posting the best results, especially after Color Splash.
As for Miyamoto's age, I think that has nothing to do with it, actually. I work IT with some surprisingly old individuals, and we all know that the stereotype is that past a certain age, people just aren't good at this whole "technology" thing, but it's really about mindset. These old guns are willing to learn the new stuff and willing to let go of the past, and that's where all the difference is. I think that Miyamoto just doesn't have the mindset to accept a different Mario than his vision, and that's probably something we'll see in other franchises if the directors are allowed to age with an iron fist and a closed mind about where the franchises go.