I understand the hope that Geno fans have. I would certainly be pleased with having Geno playable along with maybe a Super Mario RPG stage and music. But y'all gotta remember that, as a Square Enix character, Geno is still up against the likes of Sora and 2B. Technically Lara Croft too, plus Crono if Sakurai wants to go for a different retro throwback Square Enix RPG hero.
Hope all you want, but remember to keep your expectations in check~
Sora isn’t a Square Enix character (not that this bull**** competitiveness has ever mattered, now that we have more DLC, we could theoretically end up with as many reps from companies as we want), he’s Disney with little more than a courtesy call to Square Enix. 2B has never appeared on a Nintendo console, so she’s out (I’m not going to count a single costume that looks like her in Phantasy Star Online 2). Crono literally comes from a game series more dead than Super Mario RPG (yes, Cross exists, but the entire series literally has no future according to Square Enix) and is much less requested of a character by several degrees.
Lara Croft is the only one really worth bringing up. And while she is an icon, she’s also not Japanese (I do think that creates one extra hurdle for characters) nor does she have fan support or Sakurai bias. Tomb Raider basically has always performed horrendously in Japan too, even in its heyday, so she’s not the icon over there and that hurts her quite a bit too.
Not to mention, the whole “more iconic” characters over “less iconic” ones went out the window when Banjo & Kazooie were chosen as the Microsoft reps. It’s just what Sakurai prioritizes and prefers, and he likes Geno and knows there is fan demand for him, so it’s seems pretty likely right now. Especially since Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest were the titans that arguably had to be represented first.
Idunno, I don't understand the concept. I play as male and female characters alike basically. My current main in Ultimate is Zelda with a pocket Lucina, and in 4 I ran Cloud and ZSS. Brawl I ran Snake, Melee Marth and Mario. And my all time most wanteds have been Lyn and Banjo-Kazooie. I don't understand the sentiment that characters in videogames need to match your sex in order to find them appealing.
To me it just feels disingenuous when people say that "we NEED female fighters to appeal to female gamers" when I know most girls generally don't care. I know plenty of girls who play Smash, that don't really much care for the sex of the character in order to play them. Hell, if anything, in my experience with playing with female friends, they're more drawn to "cute" characters like Kirby and Pikachu, than girl fighters. In fact, in most cases as well, they'll opt for a pretty boy like Link or Cloud before another female fighter like Peach, Zelda, or Samus.
All I'm saying is I wish people were more honest when saying why they want more of a specific type of character, rather than try and take the moral highground on some nonexisten percieved injustice. That's all. Like, I'm not ashamed to admit the fact that one of the reasons I picked up Zelda in Ultimate is cause I really liked her new design. There's no moral or ethical reason for why I picked her, I just thought she was pretty.
And what point would that be?
The point that you're continuing to miss in your conversation about female characters. Representation is specifically the point the majority of people are discussing when they bring up "more female fighters" or "more fighters of color." It matters to people that they see characters that can reflect their background in meaningful ways and it promotes further normalization of diversity in a roster of characters. It means something to people to be taken seriously in fictional works and media, especially when they have traditionally been excluded from most of it most of their lives. Something that is incredibly easy to take for granted when you've grown up around characters like you your entire life (speaking from a racial, gender, and sexuality standpoint).
Not all women care about representation in media. But plenty of them also do, and there are some in this thread directly pushing for more representation. Literally any issue you bring to the table will have different sides to the discussion, so it's not some sort of mark against the discussion at large. You keep bringing up this idea of "disingenuous statements" for no good reason. Nobody is saying they speak for all the people of their gender and/or sex when they make statements about representation and a desire for female characters. We all have specific anecdotal evidence that pushes us in certain directions (I have had friends where the women, or the lack thereof on the roster, has been a sticking point with the game for them). And it is a growing sentiment in some areas of the Smash community that some people like to see the roster become more diverse in meaningful ways.
Pretending that people aren't being honest in their calls for representation though, is kind of a **** move. There's an undeniably higher percentage of male characters in the game and males continued to be prioritized as inclusions from new series traditionally focus on games that were made for young, white, males in the first place and thus have a male main character that gets included. Now, Smash is just a reflection of the industry, so there's a more nuanced criticism of everything involved, and that does require some further dissection and analysis of how the industry as a whole has dealt with diversity since its inception (Hint: Poorly and oftentimes completely unaware of its own prejudices). But Smash is also a franchise that could potentially choose meaningful female representatives to add like Shantae, like Lara Croft, like Jill Valentine, and so on. People are more than capable of recognizing the lack of female characters (or characters of color/minority status) and deciding that they would like more characters that reflect the diversity they either belong to or see in their world without some sort of ulterior motive. Representation matters to these people and that's just that.
It's fine if you don't understand the concept or just play as characters because they're pretty, but don't bring down other people because of their interest in working towards and supporting the ideas of representation in the Smash roster.