I'm very quickly losing faith in Nintendo's decision making skills. It seems like some part of every major announcement they've made since E3 of last year has been a disappointment, and pretty much has flown in the face of everything the fans have wanted. Fans want Mewtwo, Ridley, and K.Rool in Smash; we don't get them (at least initially, and we still don't have two of them), and then Sakurai calls us children since we wanted something else. Fans want a Metroid Prime game; we get offered a chibi-space-soccer with the Metroid name. Fans want a new Mario or Zelda platformer for their WiiU since they want it for a reason other than parties; we're given Mario Paint 2.0 and told that Zelda is coming and will totally be for the WiiU and not the mysterious NX which will come out right around the same time. Fans want cool amiibo or themed consoles; we get extremely limited releases, preorders that sell out in seconds, and exorbitant scalper prices on eBay. And now, fans want some overlooked Nintendo characters to be Smash DLC; and things are looking grim. Again.
If I were in charge, I'd definitely have some of my employees lurking on forums to try to gauge reactions. Anyone with a knowledge of computer programming can write a bot to spam votes, but that's not thousands of guaranteed buys. Our Kutthroat list shows 662 people who will definitely buy the DLC, not to mention the thousands possible from before who aren't on this site. Besides, if there's a character showing up in the top 5 of pretty much every fan poll, there's a good chance that most of the fanbase wants him.
I'd even point to the RTC thread. We've rated two of the characters who were confirmed as DLC: Roy and Ryu. Neither manages to make it into the top 10 of want (Roy's at 15, Ryu at 20). If I were planning DLC, I'd use that as a resource, since that also takes into account who doesn't like a character, and therefore how badly it won't sell (the two character we've been stressing about recently are coming in at 39th and 93rd). Maybe it's me being biased, but I feel like someone a bit higher on the list would sell better.
I know some people are going to get mad telling me how much Sakurai is killing himself to make this game for us, but it seems more and more like he's making it for himself, regardless of what the majority of fans want. They're a company, and they still need to earn my business. As a consumer, I have a right to be angry about the direction a product is going. I'm not going to go spamming hate for Nintendo/various characters, but I'll vent my frustrations a bit here, and then keep my money right in my wallet. Besides, that'll say more than any number of votes on the ballot ever could.
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