It says 'Lineup phase 1' so maybe Nintendo will get involved later on in one of the next phases, who knows?... Geoff probably knows...
True, you have a point there.
Speaking of denying characters due to their parent companies...
Doom Slayer - Bethesda's bad business practice with Fallout 76... and recently dispute with the composer
Ryu Hayabusa - Koei's crappy costume sales practice... paying dollar for switching hair, remember? Although they fixed it.
Crash - Activision... do I have to say more? I guess they got better recently... but barely
Sorry if I'm missing others... I am just bringing up characters from top of my head.
Honestly, this feels a bit random.
All the companies have their bad things. Including Nintendo, of course. You could add Nintendo themselves there because, idk
- They barely discount their first party games in comparison to other publishers (Breath of the Wild still costs 50-60 bucks ffs)
- Their online services in general are essentially prehistoric, specially if compared to Microsoft's and Sony's
- In relation to the previous point, Switch features are almost non existent after 3 years
- Nintendo's exaggeratedly protective with their IPs, cancelling fan games and more
Then you have infamous stories from them during the 90s and how they treated 3rd parties back then, among other things. The difference between Nintendo and Activision/Koei/Bethesda in this case is that Smash Bros is a Nintendo game.