We've been over this one a bunch of times already. Lots of vets were only moderately popular at best. People wanted some vets, but not necessarily all of them, and if Sakurai determined that "Everyone is Here" was a good idea by using the ballot, then he misinterpreted what people wanted.
That's not a misinterpretation at all. That's a "every single veteran has a fanbase and they all have some requests. Let's do the best we can to please all previous fans too".
It can be fully pre-planned and still be roster padding. But either way, the main point there was that even if the Echoes were decided by the ballot, that's still not moving the needle much. They're lower-effort clones, and that's the primary reason that they're in, ballot or no. Without the ballot, maybe we would get, idk, Alph with Rock Pikmin instead of Dark Samus. But something like that makes little difference in the grand scheme of the roster construction.
Alph was never really feasible for that. Rock Pikmin was meant for Olimar. Alph was considered as a separate character. It's two separate thoughts. More importantly, the Pikmin are very important and actually are key to it. The Captains all play alike, so it's easier to keep 'em together for now. There's not a lot of new Pikmin, so splitting him off when he has to make an all new model for Rock Pikmin and figure out a way to make it work differently from Purple Pikmin is not easy in itself. There's few options till more actual physical Pikmin come out to better justify it. Dark Samus made way more sense(and was way more feasible since the model was fully there from the start. It is possible she got more requests, but it's also possible he views the Captains as too interchangeable). Basically, it's a case of "one franchise works better this way" possibly. I am not saying it's a good thing. Though do note that the proper titles for the characters are "Pikmin & Olimar" and "Pikmin & Alph". For whatever reason, the translations don't bother to do this. It's a misnomer. People only want to think the Captains are important, but it's not remotely true.
Now, I don't have a gripe with Castlevania being in the game. But I don't agree with them justifying its inclusion based on the ballot. Castlevania may have the credentials to be in Smash, but so did plenty of other characters who were, by all measures available to us, even more highly requested than Castlevania. You say it's not a competition, and maybe it's not meant to be that way, but development resources are finite. They have to weigh one character getting in vs. another one. In fact, "character slots" may actually be a thing, at least to some extent; we know Sakurai left a spot open specifically for a Pokémon both in Ultimate and in 4, and Sakurai labeled Duck Hunt as "this game's surprise character" in the project plan for 4, suggesting that he saves a spot for a surprise (this is further supported by the chain of G&W, R.O.B., and now PP). And again, not every character has to be from the ballot, so Castlevania itself isn't the issue. Trying to use Castlevania as a way to write off the issue is what we're talking about.
You can disagree with him choosing Castlevania, but it still got in as part of the ballot factor. I don't know if PP is a surprise character. There might not be one this time around. He seems more like the joke character, like what Pichu and Jigglypuff are, which is a bit different.
Character slots are very much a thing. We've known that for a while now. Sometimes series slots too(in fact, he chose Zero Suit Samus just to get another Metroid character in). One can argue some of these reasons are shallow. To be honest, I agree. Not everything is super well thought out. Despite not getting all my favorites in, though, I'm not too hung up on it, though.
I
n the quote you provided, the plural you pointed out doesn't really matter. He just says that he referred to the Ballot when selecting characters, which just means that it was a part of the process. This does not imply that anybody else actually got in because of it. And no, King K. Rool winning did not guarantee him a spot; if Shrek won I doubt they'd add him. I never meant to imply that the ballot was supposed to produce one winner; however, it just so happens that everything beyond the winner was cherry-picked.
It was always going to be cherry-picked. That's... normal for a suggestion box. You really can't expect him to only pick the most voted when there's way too many factors. A lot more goes into it than pure popularity.
And it does matter. But you missed the point of why it does. The point of what was said wasn't that it proved he chose multiple characters from it(which he did, as we have proof of a minimum of 3 at least, being Simon, Richter, and King K. Rool. With probably Chrom and Dark Damus. And very likely some of the veterans, if not all that weren't in 4). The point was that he didn't only consider it a single winner could matter. That's now how it was looked at. It was never a contest. Now I may have mispoken or gave off a wrong impression earlier. I apologize for that.
From the Iwata quote you provided earlier:
"I imagine that you have some fighters in mind yourself. Can you think of anyone you’d like to see fight against characters like Mario or Link in Super Smash Brothers? "
They absolutely branded the ballot as "who would you want to see as a PC?" and not "who would you like as a PC or Mii Costume or AT or Trophy or whatever else." Yes, non-playable representation matters and can be a good consolation prize, but that doesn't replace giving priority to characters with big-time requests when they decide the roster.
We already know that some of the Mii costumes are consolation prizes. So it mattered for that too. Basically, Sakurai used the ballot to see who a lot of characters were, and while he couldn't make all playable, he threw some fans a bone too. It's kind of simple in that regard. Do what you can with the information you have.
Also, um, how are Mii Fighters not a legitimate way to look at what Iwata said? Mii Costumes represent actual characters in many cases. You can argue the AT or Trophy/Spirit/Sticker. But Mii Fighters are pretty clear in a lot of what their purposes are. Which is having a costume to represent a normal character as best they can. Generally because they were not possible for playable otherwise.
But if they used this as justification for "Everyone is Here" then that's not from the ballot. Judging people's reactions to characters is anecdotal evidence at best; that's part of why they created the ballot, so that they'd have harder numbers to determine characters' popularity. Just because people cheered when Pichu showed up on screen doesn't mean it was a big-time request to return, especially if it didn't have the raw numbers to back it up.
You know Pichu is the Gen II mascot right? It's extremely popular. To pretend it didn't get a lot of votes is kind of silly at this point. Mascots get lots of votes. It also wasn't as unpopular as people think it was. He actually got a lot of people who liked it, and the hatebase was either clone haters or tier-related issues, not simply because of the character alone. The only Pichu of note that even gets real hate(because of the character specifically) is the notch-eared one in the actual Pokemon games due to being unable to evolve, has a terrible small movepool(4 preset moves) and awful stats.
Maybe the better analogy is "they see Phoenix Wright, Leon Kennedy, and Chun Li were the top 3 voted-on Capcom characters, and they went with Chun Li because Sakurai likes Street Fighter, even though Wright and Kennedy both had way more votes than her." Compare that to "Phoenix Wright had a slightly higher vote total than Chun Li, but for some strange reason Capcom said they wouldn't give Nintendo the rights to Phoenix Wright, so they decided on Chun Li after trying very hard to get Wright."
And both could be correct. That's overall the thing. There's too many variables and stuff we don't know. Both can happen with tons of characters.
Again, it's not about Castlevania being deserving or not. It's them trying to use Castlevania as an example of something that was "determined by the fans" when it was primarily determined based on other factors (and I'm sure its place in gaming history was one of those factors).
It has a huge place in gaming history. That's definitely a factor. Being it's the only thing Sakurai cited about the series in relation to it being added, it's pretty safe to assume he means it when he says it's the primary reason. There's little reason to believe otherwise with such a major series. A lot of major series tend to still be very active IP's, and Casltevania is one of them.
Please don't play the "dead character" card on me...I don't want to come off as disrespectful but I'm tired of it.
If anything, a "dead character" being highly requested should tell them that maybe, just maybe, fans want content from that series beyond just Smash. Adding a character from an inactive franchise doesn't necessarily make sense from a marketing perspective, sure. But if you're asking for suggestions from fans, you can't expect them to always have requests that fit with your marketing tastes. And probably they expected stuff like Cloud and Bayonetta to be the winners, and it was a shock to them when K. Rool and Isaac did so well. But instead of reconsidering their connection to their fanbase, they largely stuck with what they expected to win anyway. If you ask me, being "dead" is not a valid reason by itself to skip over the "suggestion" (but maybe that's a separate argument).
Dude, he can't add every character under the sun. Dead franchises are lower priority than active ones. It's a guideline, not a hard rule. But he has made it clear that he takes that into account. It's a real thing he considers. And it makes sense. Isaac isn't my favorite example, as I really wanted him in too, but he's a very relevant example of currently being an irrelevant character currently. But he also gave fans a consolation prize with the MIi costume and Golden Sun got a ton of other content via Spirits. So clearly he cared. If Polar is to be believed, Nintendo wasn't even aware of the major fan demand, and were surprised by the outrage of him being an AT again. I doubt it myself(I don't doubt it has content due to the ballot. That's kind of the most obvious reason to give so much, since it's the only way he could've known it's still super popular). Nintendo and Sakurai don't think alike, so that's another story, and may lead credence to Polar's claim.
