The thing with Smash reveals is that they're also likely affected by deliberate timing with marketing decisions by Nintendo. Beyond Minecon, Steve's reveal made sense to be held off of for most of the summer while the big time sensitive stuff like the Mario 35th and Age of Calamity announcements were knocked out first.
The significant question will be if Nintendo tries going back to a big seasonal Direct system (March presentation, E3 video, Fall Showcase) next year or it its continuing the shadow drops and semi-weekly news model like they have. Either path will play a big part in determining dates for Smash news.
Honestly I don't see them going back to the seasonal Direct until a vaccine's established and widely distributed. If only because Nintendo really doesn't want to find themselves in a situation where they announce a game at a seasonal Direct... only to have the game's dev team severely impacted by the virus at a crucial time. And Nintendo's just as quiet as Valve on projects. They hypotheoretically could, but not counting on it.
For the forseeable future (I'm going to say a placeholder date of March 2021) they're going to most likely continue with regular shadowdrops.
As far as TGA is concerned, that could happen - although it's going to be a difficult call. Steve's presentation was recorded in mid-August, and going by the time between Min Min's presentation (May 2nd) and Steve's we're looking at ca. 3 1 / 2 months. However, there's a lot of factors that could affect FP8, such as how much additional work will be put into online.
I expect some of the online changes to ship with 9.0; in order to reassure the hardcore side that changes are being worked on, especially when 8.1 included a promise about additional online changes. But I don't think 9.0 will be the end of that since making changes to Ultimate's online system is going to take a lot of work. Especially since it's a widely loathed system. So honestly I'm thinking that work on FP8 could be affected by that (as well as other stuff). I'm also thinking that 9.0 (Steve's patch) was delayed not just for marketing reasons, but also so they could try to finalize some adjustments to the online.
Anyway, let's talk about Smash Bros. for some reason. I feel like the "bare minimum" I need to be content with FP2 is either one more first-party character, or Crash Bandicoot. Gut feeling, what are my odds? Do you have a bare minimum of your own?
Not exactly. I'm not picky about which characters we get (as long as it's not designed to be intentionally trolly, but I trust Sakurai and co. to avoid that.). I do have my favorites obviously, but my most wanted is near-impossible.
"too big"
He's undoubtedly the most requested upgrade.
