I find something in Nintendo Power's interview with Sakurai about Uprising. It's the same interview in which he reiterates that Smash Bros. will take awhile, be patient, etc. I'm pretty sure this has been overlooked, and it may be nothing, but Sakurai has that way of beating around the bush. The following question came from NP during an interview about Kid Icarus: Uprising:
Nintendo Power: As a fan of classic games, are there any other long-dormant characters that you'd like to bring back?
Sakurai: If there were such a character, I might be planning its revival for the next Smash Bros. game. Maybe I have someone in mind? You know, you could probably say that I'm the best in the world when it comes to giving second acts to classic video game characters. That's mostly due to Smash Bros., and now I can't believe I'm doing the same thing with Kid Icarus!
Aaaaaaand... go.
Edit: @asage: Poo. I thought I'd made a big discovery...
@Smash Bros. Fan: Fair assessment. Fan demand does influence the process, but it's a very very tiny influence. Sure, the most popular character will make it, but that should be expected. That being said, Sonic probably wouldn't have made it into Brawl without the poll. What I'm saying is that the kind of thing we do here, that is, weighing the likelihood of characters, creating movesets, and speculating just don't carry too much weight. The only fan input that gets heard is the loudest, and the loudest opinions are the ones that are voiced in such a way that the dev team hears them (i.e. a poll). Our chances to influence character selection are present, but few and far between. As far as the online goes, nobody was happy with that. It's another one of those things that's too obvious to ignore. It would be expected that it would improve, based on the dynamic nature of game development.