Official Newcomer/DLC Speculation Discussion

Icedragonadam · Jul 11, 2020

I mean would MC even be affordable with Volume's 2 lower budget?

Will · Jul 11, 2020

zeldasmash said:
The only way it would make sense if Chief makes it as Mii Costume is if Microsoft makes it so for whatever reason or if Steve makes it in as playable instead (I hope not...). In every other circumstance, Chief is playable character material and Nintendo would honestly be quite dumb if they didn't take advantage of having someone like Chief, one of the biggest icons in the industry, as playable in Smash. There is literally no downside to having Chief playable here or at least I can't come up with one or think of one.

Him being a Mii Costume I think would be extremely disappointing to me.

If only we lived in a world where we could stop Nintendo from making him a costume after already locking in their fighter choices just by saying you'd be disappointed by it. :mybodyisreggie:

Congratulations, you stopped the Chief from being demoted to such a pitiable class as Mii Costume and is now not even in the game.

M@R!3 · Jul 11, 2020

Megadoomer said:
Unlike Konami, Activision, etc., Disney and Tencent aren't video game/electronics companies first and foremost, which seems like it would make licensing more complicated. To use Disney as an example, it seems as though their licensing agreements don't last especially long. Ducktales Remastered was on digital stores for about six years before being delisted, while Marvel vs. Capcom Origins was only available digitally for two years. (there are examples with shorter amount of times associated with them)

I wouldn't want, say, a Sora DLC to be made permanently unavailable after two to three years because someone didn't renew the licensing agreement.

Given the number of characters from 3rd parties in Smash Ultimate takedowns are an inevitable reality for both the DLC and the base game. Nintendo will have no reason to renew the licenses beyond the profitable lifespan of the Switch. Though I highly doubt we'll see anything removed from the e-shop before whatever will succeed the Switch is announced.

Verde Coeden Scalesworth · Jul 11, 2020

Perkilator said:
Just to ask: HWYR if this was the starting roster for a Smash Ultimate rerelease?

...What's the consistency here? It isn't base game, because then PP would not be there and it's missing multiple Echoes(and their counterpart). It can't be first representative and some others for franchises, cause Villager mostly definitely would come before Isabelle anyway. If you remove the Echoes and PP, and add a few more, it honestly looks a lot more evened out. Since you can have Villager, other possible 3rd parties, Shulk, Wii Fit Trainer, etc.

If we remove PP since it's pretty much DLC(unless you meant all DLC is there? And since PP wasn't a pack character, it's a good option to represent DLC's first character), and properly add in the rest of the base game characters, as well as others, we'd just be adding in Villager, Peach, Daisy, Roy, Chrom, and a few others who are very logical to be there due to this, being Marth and Lucina(since Marth is the main FE option).

There's other routes to take, like removing some of the original 4 bonus characters(maybe leaving Ness and Falcon due to representing their franchises first... and only in Falcon's case too) to make room for others. 21 is also pretty high alone, But that'd still need Villager there first(Isabelle makes more sense unlockable. Never found the idea that the new character should come first and frankly Brawl's roster suffered a lot due to some weird unlock choices).

Dinoman96 · Jul 11, 2020

Icedragonadam said:
I mean would MC even be affordable with Volume's 2 lower budget?

Well, we don't even know what their budget is.

Perkilator · Jul 11, 2020

Beth Uriel said:
...What's the consistency here? It isn't base game, because then PP would not be there and it's missing multiple Echoes(and their counterpart). It can't be first representative and some others for franchises, cause Villager mostly definitely would come before Isabelle anyway. If you remove the Echoes and PP, and add a few more, it honestly looks a lot more evened out. Since you can have Villager, other possible 3rd parties, Shulk, Wii Fit Trainer, etc.

If we remove PP since it's pretty much DLC(unless you meant all DLC is there? And since PP wasn't a pack character, it's a good option to represent DLC's first character), and properly add in the rest of the base game characters, as well as others, we'd just be adding in Villager, Peach, Daisy, Roy, Chrom, and a few others who are very logical to be there due to this, being Marth and Lucina(since Marth is the main FE option).

There's other routes to take, like removing some of the original 4 bonus characters(maybe leaving Ness and Falcon due to representing their franchises first... and only in Falcon's case too) to make room for others. 21 is also pretty high alone, But that'd still need Villager there first(Isabelle makes more sense unlockable. Never found the idea that the new character should come first and frankly Brawl's roster suffered a lot due to some weird unlock choices).

Okay, this is just a little experimient. And yes, all the DLC would be there in a rerelease.

LiveStudioAudience · Jul 11, 2020

Icedragonadam said:
I mean would MC even be affordable with Volume's 2 lower budget?

This gives me the amusing concept of Sakurai running out of money and having to settle for cheaper options from companies.

"We'll have either Master Chief or Minecraft Steve."

"Those are both beyond our budget."

"Battletoads? Killer Instinct?"

"Them too."

"Is there any character from Microsoft we can afford?"

"Just one, I'm afraid."

Rie Sonomura · Jul 11, 2020

LiveStudioAudience said:
This gives me the amusing concept of Sakurai running out of money and having to settle for cheaper options from companies.

"We'll have either Master Chief or Minecraft Steve."

"Those are both beyond our budget."

"Battletoads? Killer Instinct?"

"Them too."

"Is there any character from Microsoft we can afford?"

"Just one, I'm afraid."

Not Ori/10

Verde Coeden Scalesworth · Jul 11, 2020

Perkilator said:
Okay, this is just a little experimient. And yes, all the DLC would be there in a rerelease.

I just want to understand the theme more clearly.

PP represents DLC first. Smash 64 characters are there, but not Melee/Brawl/4's, which is why the Echoes don't exist that relate to characters from these three games. Hence no Chrom or Daisy, since Roy and Peach were introduced first in Melee. Do I have that correct? Cause then I can see where you're coming from with the experiment. Only basically first and last game.

osby · Jul 11, 2020

Dinoman96 said:
Well, we don't even know what their budget is.

It's high enough to afford my favorite character but it's not so high that they can add characters I dislike. At least, that's what Smash speculation told me.

SKX31 · Jul 11, 2020

Megadoomer said:
Unlike Konami, Activision, etc., Disney and Tencent aren't video game/electronics companies first and foremost, which seems like it would make licensing more complicated. To use Disney as an example, it seems as though their licensing agreements don't last especially long. Ducktales Remastered was on digital stores for about six years before being delisted, while Marvel vs. Capcom Origins was only available digitally for two years. (there are examples with shorter amount of times associated with them)

I wouldn't want, say, a Sora DLC to be made permanently unavailable after two to three years because someone didn't renew the licensing agreement.

Tencent is kind of nebolous, but that's going into semantics. They started out as a social media company* (their original message app, QQ, provided them their mascot - a penguin, and their multipurpose Messenger - WeChat - fueled their rise). But they started to pump out so many mobile games that their Chinese nickname became "The Penguin Factory"**. Then again, their churning out helped them ensure dominance over China's game industry.

QQ and WeChat might be what Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be, but half of Tencent's money is essentially games - which is why their spat with the Chinese government 2 years ago hurt them so much (when the Chinese government / regime froze monetization and reorganized the approval process). That spat is probably why they looked towards Nintendo and globally - the approval freeze exposed some real weaknesses within Tencent. I'd argue Nintendo has the upper hand in negotiations between the two, but that's another topic entirely.

If anyone is interested I can write a DaybreakHorizon -esque essay about which characters that would be welcomed in China (that list is surprisingly long), but I want to be sure it's something people here would be okay with.

Beth Uriel said:
There's other routes to take, like removing some of the original 4 bonus characters(maybe leaving Ness and Falcon due to representing their franchises first... and only in Falcon's case too) to make room for others.

I'll always defend Jigglypuff because of the amazing Rest setups. And I'll always defend Luigi because of his whacky playstyle and taunt.

In short, I'd argue against touching the original 12. Ever.

* One could argue that social media company = electronics, but again, semantics.
**The Chinese hardcore generally dislikes Tencent's game practices for the same reason many hardcore disliked Activision for their endless Guitar Hero releases. Pokemon Unite was notably disliked in China because of this, to the tune of "Get Lost.".

Perkilator · Jul 11, 2020

Beth Uriel said:
I just want to understand the theme more clearly.

PP represents DLC first. Smash 64 characters are there, but not Melee/Brawl/4's, which is why the Echoes don't exist that relate to characters from these three games. Hence no Chrom or Daisy, since Roy and Peach were introduced first in Melee. Do I have that correct? Cause then I can see where you're coming from with the experiment. Only basically first and last game.

Yeah, that's basically it.

Verde Coeden Scalesworth · Jul 11, 2020

Perkilator said:
Yeah, that's basically it.

Okay, makes a lot more sense. Just took me a bit to see where the logic was, but I wouldn't have noticed the idea if Dark Samus wasn't sitting up there, heh. I'd still add some veterans from the other series, especially Marth and Villager. They really look odd not being there for base now.

SKX31 said:
I'll always defend Jigglypuff because of the amazing Rest setups. And I'll always defend Luigi because of his whacky playstyle and taunt.

In short, I'd argue against touching the original 12. Ever.

...We're talking about moving some to playable instead of unlockable. Nobody is talking about outright cutting 'em. I'm guessing you missed the context or misread what I meant.

SKX31 · Jul 11, 2020

Beth Uriel said:
...We're talking about moving some to playable instead of unlockable. Nobody is talking about outright cutting 'em. I'm guessing you missed the context or misread what I meant.

I did, TBH, but I'm standing by my opinion that the Original 12 should be starters.

Then again, my opinion is influenced by years of seeing what those characters can do.

osby said:
It's high enough to afford my favorite character but it's not so high that they can add characters I dislike. At least, that's what Smash speculation told me.

So what would be the medium then? Characters people are lukewarm or 50 / 50 towards?

Animegamingnerd · Jul 11, 2020

Icedragonadam said:
I mean would MC even be affordable with Volume's 2 lower budget?

I don't think budget would be any issue, Master Chief comes to do if Nintendo wants him or not.

Verde Coeden Scalesworth · Jul 11, 2020

SKX31 said:
I did, TBH, but I'm standing by my opinion that the Original 12 should be starters.

Then again, my opinion is influenced by years of seeing what those characters can do.

To me, the only necessary starters are those who first represent the franchise. The rest can go either way. They start the franchise off, so they should be the starter character of the franchise always. I agree the other ones should not be cut, but it makes sense even in Ultimate why the original 12 weren't a necessity. The only ones that made sense would be Ness and Falcon because they represent their franchises first. And it was clear Sakurai chose the first 8 just because it's the Smash 64 starting roster.

There's other ways to do it anyway. Pokemon Trainer would also be a logical first one over Pikachu because it's the actual player character. Isabelle is the current mascot, so some feel she should be there first. Though there's very few cases where another character could logically represent the franchise first as a starter, but it's been clear that "being a new character" is literally the only requirement. Lucas and Ike sitting there pretty over Ness and Marth just feels awkward(though Ness and Marth are also unlocked very fast during Brawl by playing a tiny amount of matches, so at least they somewhat got around that oddity).

chocolatejr9 · Jul 11, 2020

LiveStudioAudience said:
This gives me the amusing concept of Sakurai running out of money and having to settle for cheaper options from companies.

"We'll have either Master Chief or Minecraft Steve."

"Those are both beyond our budget."

"Battletoads? Killer Instinct?"

"Them too."

"Is there any character from Microsoft we can afford?"

"Just one, I'm afraid."

This is Blinx slander and I will not stand for it!

Arcanir · Jul 11, 2020

Swamp Sensei said:
Is that a baby Rathalos?

That Rathalos himself isn't a baby as there's a time gap between him hatching and when you officially get him on your team. That said, other monsters that you hatch start at that same relative size so regardless there's probably some creative liberties at play.

DaybreakHorizon · Jul 11, 2020

Following yesterday's Geno essay, I present the next part of:

The Second Square Enix Character Argument

To catch up on the series so far, please refer to:

Part 1: Introduction, Nier, and Gex
Part 2: Final Fantasy, Lara Croft, and Crono
Part 3: Geno

This time I'll be covering Sora. While I was supposed to cover him alongside Geno, this essay more than surpassed my expectations. The outline started about as large as my outline for Geno, and I expected the essays to be about similar in length. However, as I expanded on the outline it just kept growing. This essay clocks in at over 4,300 words, which is about 2/3 of the entirety of my original Ultimate Square Enix Character Argument. This is my most comprehensive character argument, and could possibly be the most comprehensive character argument for Sora so far. I put a lot of work into this one, so I hope you all enjoy! Without further ado:

Like with most of the characters I've written on in this series, I've previously written on Sora, most prominently in my 2018 Ultimate Square Enix Character Argument. In that, I widely defended his chances like the Sora fan I am. This time around, I plan on taking a more objective look to his chances in Smash. You can refer to my previous argument for some points on the strength of the KH series at the time, as I'll mainly be taking a look at the current circumstances of the KH series. Some of this argument will be recycled from my earlier essay, however, as some of the points play a part in the argument going forward. I'll be divvying this essay up into three sections (plus a bonus section in the middle), named after the topics they'll be covering.

The Status of the Kingdom Hearts Series

To put it briefly: the Kingdom Hearts series is doing better now more than ever.

To start, Kingdom Hearts 3 smashed series sales records by selling 5 million units in less than 2 weeks, and debuted on sales charts at number 1, above Capcom's much-anticipated Resident Evil (also known as Biohazard in Japan) 2 remake. To put that into perspective, by February, KH3 exceeded sales of Kingdom Hearts 2 by over 80% within the same time frame. Undoubtedly this is, in part, due to the fact that Kingdom Hearts 3 was the first game to break Kingdom Hearts' large Playstation exclusivity by also releasing on Xbox at the same time as PS4. This was followed by Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, or, without the long convoluted names: the rest of the Kingdom Hearts series up to this point.

People are being exposed to the Kingdom Hearts' now more than ever given its large accessibility on modern consoles. This is further exacerbated by the large sales games in the series have seen. Seriously. You can get the entire series for like, $60 (not counting KH3's DLC expansion, which is worth additional $30). That's the same price as Pokémon Sword or Shield plus the expansion pass. I don't know about you, but when faced with the choice between more Pokémon except it's soulless or over a decade's worth of great action RPGs (like, 7 full games), the decision's obvious. But I digress

The series recently saw two new games announced, those being Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road, a rebranding of the Kingdom Hearts mobile game, and Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory, the Kingdom Hearts' series long overdue Theatrym counterpart. MoM (which is a rather cheeky abbreviation for fans up to date on the series) also marks the debut of Kingdom Hearts on the Nintendo Switch, which is simultaneously surprising and not surprising at all, given the precedent of Kingdom Hearts "spinoffs" (there are no spinoffs in this series), such as 358/2 Days, Re:Coded, and Dream Drop Distance appearing first on Nintendo consoles. Regardless, this shows that Square Enix at least acknowledges the Switch as a platform for Kingdom Hearts games going forward, assuming the Switch can handle them.

The Kingdom Hearts series was already performing relatively well, selling over 24 million units as of November 2017 (which is now 32 million units as of June 2019), but over time the series has only gained traction, to the point where it's now one Square Enix and Disney's predominant series. At the very least, it has enough reputation and notoriety to warrant inclusion in Smash.

Disney

Hoo boy, we've got a lot to cover here.

I don't think Disney needs any introduction. For better or for worse, you'd have to be living under a rock to not know what Disney is. Furthermore, it's common knowledge that for all intents and purposes, Disney owns the legal rights to all original content in the Kingdom Hearts series, Sora included. If Sora is to be included in Smash, Disney is going to play an essential role in negotiations for them.

Which throws a wrench into any sort of speculation about Sora, because no one knows how to predict Disney in this regard.

A lot of users are skeptical of negotiations succeeding, in large part due to Disney. Smashboard users NonSpecificGuy and PlayerOneTyler have spoken of their experiences working with Disney, and how difficult Disney's legal team is to work with. One of them spoke about how difficult obtaining Kingdom Hearts content for Disney Infinity, a game developed internally within Disney, was. If it's difficult for an internal team to gain access to Kingdom Hearts content, then Nintendo, an outside company, is going to be facing a steep uphill battle for Sora in Smash.

However, that was circa 2018. Since then, I would argue that the climate within Disney has changed favorably for Sora's chances.

I'm going to be linking a lot to this summary of popular Kingdom Hearts youtuber HMK's interview with Disney of Japan Vice President and General Manager Justin Scarpone (I've already linked to it once before this), since it's the best primary source with which to discuss how Disney might act in negotiations for Sora. This is a rather old source, however, and I'll discuss how things may or may not have changed since then.

Scarpone talks quite a bit about the process of how negotiations for Sora would go down. To condense the process, it goes as such:

Nintendo approaches Disney for negotiations
Assuming fan demand exists, approval from Normura and Square Enix would be required
Assuming the above conditions are met, Disney seriously considers the offer.
Assuming that Disney accepts the offer, they would then work alongside Nintendo to represent Sora accurately in Smash.

The first part is relatively straightforward. Nintendo approaches Disney and asks to use Sora, upon which negotiations begin. Whether Nintendo has approached Disney (or would approach Disney knowing the potential uphill battle they face) and would approach Disney again assuming negotiations have failed in the past (which I personally believe has happened) is a large question, and one that I honestly don't know the answer to.

The next part of negotiations relies on fan demand, and I would even venture to argue that the first part–Nintendo approaching Disney–also largely relies on such. This asks the question of whether or not Sora has significant fan demand, to which the answer is yes. There is significant fan demand for Sora, and there has been such dating back to Ballot era in 2016. The Kingdom Hearts community has posted Sora in Smash throughout the years. The aforementioned posts were from my previous Square Enix Character Argument, and these are taken more recently from the Kingdom Hearts subreddit. These are just the more prominent posts; I assure you that many more exist. The dedicated Kingdom Hearts community has largely rallied behind Sora in Smash, and is a significant source of fan demand for Sora.

Not to say that fan demand for Sora doesn't exist otherwise. On the contrary, significant support for Sora also exists within the dedicated Smash Community, and he consistently manages to score among the highest spots on fan polls for the most requested or anticipated Smash characters. Needless to say, there's more than enough fan demand to justify both Nintendo approaching Disney and beginning negotiations for Sora in Smash.

Next is approval from Square Enix. It's important here to note the role that Square Enix has the legal rights for Nintendo, which I believe is often understated. While Disney, for all intents and purposes, owns the rights to Kingdom Hearts original content, they're engaged in a gentleman's agreement with Square Enix and Normura wherein Disney always goes to them for approval on Kingdom Hearts appearing significantly outside of the series. This is something they've honored since the start of the series, cancelling a potential Kingdom Hearts cartoon based on the original game "so as to not jeopardize the relationship between Square Enix & Disney as they began to expand the franchise," as well as cancelling a Disney developed Kingdom Hearts mobile game, likely for similar reasons. Needless to say, this agreement is very important to Disney.

This raises the question of whether or not Square Enix would approve. The short answer: More than likely yes.

For one, Sakurai and Normura have an incredibly strong business relationship after working on Cloud in Smash, with Sakurai even personally congratulating Normura for the Kingdom Hearts series' 15th anniversary. Additionally, Square Enix executive officer and Kingdom Hearts co-creator Shinji Hashimoto supports Sora in Smash too, as evidenced by this now deleted tweet. Square Enix would very likely not be an obstacle to Sora's inclusion.

With approval from Square Enix, Disney would then seriously consider the proposal from Nintendo. Here's the most uncertain step in the grand scheme of things. The question now is whether or not Disney would approve the proposal. While I don't believe I have enough information to accurately predict as such, I'll lay out some of the factors that I believe would play into this.
Let's start with the business relationship between Nintendo and Disney.

It's actually pretty good. Disney and Nintendo's relationship dates back to the Pre-NES days in 1959, when Nintendo made playing cards and board games with using Disney properties. This actually boosted Nintendo's reputation and got them accepted into the Tokyo and Osaka Stock Exchanges, which allowed them to develop further as a business. Similar to Square Enix, Nintendo's picked up the publishing for multiple Disney licensed games throughout the years, including Mickey's Racing Adventure, Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, and the Disney Magical World series among others. In the past Disney properties have been prominent releases on Nintendo systems, such as the Epic Mickey and Spectrobes series respectively, and a large amount of Disney licensed games are exclusive to Nintendo systems (largely due to the large install base of children, their intended audience with such titles).

Weirdly enough, Disney also created an online game and social network service for their games on the DS? I actually remember using it for a Club Penguin spinoff game, but it's definitely among one of the weirder aspects of Disney and Nintendo's history. In the past they've also worked together on televised media, such as co-developing a game show about the Nintendo Switch and having the Smash for Wii U EVO 2017 finals televised on Disney XD. More recently, Disney has released notable exclusives for the Nintendo Switch, those being Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 and Disney Tsum Tsum Festival. Their Switch exclusivity certainly stands out given that Disney would have had a lot more to profit to gain by making these titles multiplatform. While the two seem to have recently drifted away, with Nintendo partnering with Universal for Super Nintendo World and Disney largely focusing on their movie and streaming efforts, their long history of partnerships would likely play into negotiations.

Next, let's discuss Disney and video games. Disney has had a rather complicated relationship with video games in the past. Their in-house video game development studio, Disney Interactive Studios, shut down in 2016, after which video games relating to Disney content became sparse. Furthermore, their crossovers into other media seemed purely transactional or promotional, such as Thanos in Fortnite (which appeared in Avengers Endgame), Wreck-It Ralph in Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing (likely as a result of Sonic's appearance in Wreck-It Ralph), and Wreck-It Ralph in Fortnite (to promote Ralph Breaks The Internet).

However, following the success of licensed titles such as Kingdom Hearts 3 and Star Wars Battlefront 2 (following the drama involving lootboxes), Disney has turned to a dominant strategy of licensing out their properties for game development studios to use. This is a rather recent development, with former Disney CEO Bob Iger discussing this in a February 2019 earnings call. This sentiment was more recently echoed by senior VP for games and interactive experiences Sean Shoptaw at the February 2020 DICE Summit. To further this strategy, in July 2019 Disney hired former Playstation executive John Drake as VP of business development and licensing for games, with his focus being to "help pair amazing developers and publishers with the best IP in the world." Disney's is geared up and ready to license their properties to prominent developers, which could be a significant boost for Sora's chances.

Finally, how does Disney treat the Kingdom Hearts series?

In the past, Kingdom Hearts was the red-haired stepchild kept in Disney's basement. However, KH3's success seems to have caused an internal shift within Disney, as they've started embracing the series more. Last year Sora appeared on a D23 collectable print and character costumes of Donald and Goofy in their Kingdom Hearts attire showed up at a Disneyland Halloween party. In a stream (at around the 2 hour mark), HMK discussed the surprisingly large amount of low quality licensed Kingdom Hearts merchandise, which you can find at your local Hot Topic store. While these have been around in the past (I have an old Kingdom Hearts 2 shirt that I got in the 4th grade still fits me to this day–I wear it as a pajama shirt), the quantity of such products seems to have increased as of late. Most recently, a prominent rumor of a Kingdom Hearts TV series being in the works for Disney+ has come out and basically been confirmed by multiple reputable sources. Disney is acknowledging the Kingdom Hearts series now more than ever, and seems to be attempting to capitalize off of the recent success the series has seen as much as possible. This could certainly bode well for Sora in Smash, as Disney would surely recognize the raw promotional power Smash Ultimate would have for the Kingdom Hearts series, and would seriously consider Sora's inclusion in the game.

As a side point on Disney's treatment of the Kingdom Hearts series, I'd like to highlight a point made by Scarpone in HMK's video. In it, he says that Kingdom Hearts 3 is the major focus for Disney regarding the Kingdom Hearts series, and that anything after the game's development would be more seriously considered. This would certainly make sense, given that the interview was conducted in May 2018 during the tail-end of production for KH3. It also means that negotiations pre and post-KH3 would likely play out differently for or against Nintendo.

Ultimately, I believe any point relating to Disney's role in negotiations comes down to timing. Which is why it's so difficult to answer the question of whether or not negotiations with Disney would succeed. You have to consider when Nintendo approached Disney to negotiate for Sora, and assuming that they've tried in the past and failed, whether they would try again when circumstances are more favorable.

We know character negotiations have failed in the past as stated in Sakurai's book, and knowing how difficult Disney's legal team was to work with on video games in 2016, it's not difficult to imagine Nintendo approaching Disney based on Sora's solid support in the Smash Ballot and getting rejected. If Nintendo attempted negotiations at any point prior to KH3's release, I imagine negotiations similarly falling through due to Disney. Between February - July 2019 I give Nintendo decent chances of negotiations succeeding, as around that time Disney seemed to become more open to licensing out their properties. After July 2019 I give Nintendo about the same chances of negotiations succeeding as when they went for Dragon Quest for Fighters Pass 1–not necessarily likely, but possible.

Of course, this speculation rests on a whole lot of hypotheticals. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to lineup with when Fighters Pass 2 was finalized. At latest the fighter selection for Pass 2 was decided by November 2019 (when Sakurai recorded his Byleth presentation and announced Fighters Pass 2), but if rumors about how early Pass 1 was decided on (at least in regards to Banjo being negotiated for in May 2018, months before the base game's release) is to be believed (as a side note, while I try not to use hearsay in my speculation, I believe that this fact comes from reputable enough sources to be mentioned here), it was likely much earlier. I would personally venture to guess the selections for Pass 2 were finalized by early to mid 2019.

The bottom line is this: Nintendo likely didn't have good chances for Sora when they were negotiating for Pass 2, and I personally doubt that if they tired they would succeed. I also don't know if Nintendo would try for Sora again assuming that they tried and failed at some point earlier (which I personally believe happened. Which is why I suggest this:

Tinfoil Hat tiem

If you'll just give me a second to put this on...

This is a longshot in the dark, and this is not backed by any sort of evidence whatsoever. This is more so just a fun "what if" that I think could happen in 1 out of 14,000,605 futures. If there's a point to attack in this essay, this is not one of them, as this point is not serious at all, nor will I seriously advocate for it as more than a tinfoil hat theory if pressed.

Anyways, as well all know, Fighters Pass 2 has 6 fighters instead of 5. This fact was prominently introduced and discussed in Byleth's Sakurai Presents presentation. I believe that this could be due to the fact that negotiations for a character who had previously been rejected (which we know has occurred due to Sakurai's book) suddenly became available, and Nintendo jumped on it. There is precedent for such a thing occurring in the development of a Smash game, as Sonic was a late addition to Brawl, being added 2 years after the newcomer list had initially been decided. While the exact reason for this has seemingly never been stated, it's common speculation that this was due to Sega initially rejecting the request, and then walking back on it later due to the immense hype surrounding Brawl (this Source Gaming article says as such, but does not link back to a primary source which makes me hesitant to completely believe it).

I think you can see where this is going.

Sora had immense popularity during the ballot period, with the Kingdom Hearts community rallying together for Sora's inclusion. It's not hard to believe that Nintendo tried for Sora then, but negotiations fell through for one reason or another. They drop the issue until Fighters Pass 2, when Disney has done a 180 on video games following the mass success of Kingdom Hearts 3 and is looking to promote the series in the largest gaming crossover of all time. Nintendo approaches Sakurai like they did for Dragon Quest, and they go for it despite having already decided Fighters Pass 2 in its entirety. Since it's DLC, all they have to do is tack on another fighter to the pass and promote as such.

This explanation accounts for Disney's role in negotiations while also accommodating the timeline of Fighters Pass 2 being decided. In the initial deciding, Nintendo had a very thin window to negotiate with Disney if they decided to do so, probably for the second or third time. By going outside of that timeline, however, and explaining Disney's turnaround on negotiations as being due to a desire to capitalize off the success of the Kingdom Hearts series after KH3, you can justify Sora's inclusion as the special sixth fighter in Fighters Pass 2.

Of course, I completely acknowledge the sheer amount of logical leaps and mental gymnastics needed to reach such a conclusion. This certainly doesn't hold up to Occam's Razor, which would sooner accept that negotiations for Sora either haven't occurred or failed in the past, and that this Fighters Pass has 6 characters because Fighters Pass 1 was incredibly successful, Nintendo wanted to add more characters, and it just so happened to work out to 6 characters instead of 5. However, I think this theory is worth mentioning, at the very least as a fun little thought.

Counterarguments

I'd also like to acknowledge two common counterarguments. The first being that Sora would have to bring Disney content with him, which would complicate negotiations as Disney would be overprotective of their intellectual properties. This largely argument relies on either ignorance of the series or personal opinion on what Kingdom Hearts is, as there's enough original content from Kingdom Hearts to include without so much as touching Disney properties.

This is most prominently showcased in Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover, a movie retelling of the significant events of Kingdom Hearts χ, which is integral to the overarching plot of the Kingdom Hearts series. Disney worlds aren't brought up at all in the story; instead it relies solely on original content to carry the story, and it works. Furthermore, the finale of Kingdom Hearts 3 (where pretty much the entire story takes place) uses no Disney content aside from the presence of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in some of the final battles. While Disney content is important to the Kingdom Hearts series, it is not a necessary requirement.

Sora's Kingdom Key, which contains the Mickey ears as a key chain, could be altered or replaced to remove the mention. The key chain could be replaced with the Smash logo, or Sakurai could even design a new Keyblade for Smash specifically (which would actually be really cool). Furthermore, instead of the Kingdom Key, Shooting Star, which was prominently featuring in KH3's marketing alongside the Kingdom Key (and shows up in story cutscenes), or Oathkeeper and/or Oblivion, fan favorite Keyblades relevant to Sora's character could be used in place of the Kingdom Key. This is supposing the Mickey ears keychain is important, which it doesn't seem to be as evidenced by it appearing in other crossovers featuring Sora, such as his appearance in World of Final Fantasy's DLC.

Spirits could draw from the Heartless, Nobodies, Unversed, the other Warriors of Light (minus Mickey), Organization XIII, characters from Kingdom Hearts χ, etc. Stages could draw from Kingdom Hearts original worlds like Traverse Town, The End of the World, Castle Oblivion, Twilight Town, The World That Never Was, The Land of Departure, or Scala ad Caelum among others. Music could take from the large variety of music that plays in these worlds, or from the bevy of boss music used throughout the series (I'd love to see them use the remixes from KH3's Limit Cut episode, all of which are amazing).

Furthermore, this argument rests on the hypothetical of Disney being stingy with all of their intellectual properties in negotiations, which may or may not be true. At this point, however, the Kingdom Hearts series has enough of a unique identity to stand on its, which it seems to be attempting going forward if the Secret Episode of Kingdom Hearts 3 is to be believed. Nintendo and Sakurai could faithfully represent the series without so much as touching other Disney properties if need be.

Second, I'd also like to address the supposed disconfirmation of Sora by former Game Informer editor Imran Khan, who is known to have insider sources. This was pure speculation on his part, and he later went on to say he personally believes Sora is a contender for the "next big Smash Ultimate Character" alongside Master Chief. His speculation isn't necessarily surprising, as even I would say it's likely that negotiations for Sora have been attempted and fell through in the past. Regardless, this is a non-point based on the kneejerk reaction people has to Khan's statement immediately preceding him saying the next big character is Sora or Master Chief.

In Closing

I genuinely have no clue how likely or unlikely Sora is. In my (Kingdom) heart of hearts I want to believe in him, but I have no clue about how Disney plays into his chances, nor do I believe I have enough information to confidently speculate as such. If negotiations for him were to occur now, I'd say feel favorably for his chances, but as Disney just seems to have turned around on video games now, I don't know if negotiations could've been successful when deciding Fighters Pass 2, which was likely negotiated for in early-mid 2019. Furthermore, there's the unanswered question of whether Nintendo would try for Sora again after negotiations for him have likely been attempted before and fell through.

Hence why I suggest my tinfoil hat theory, as it satisfies the conditions for negotiations on Sora for Fighters Pass 2 to succeed by going outside of the timeline of Fighters Pass 2 being initially decided, justifying why it'd succeed compared to before, as well as explaining why Fighters Pass 2 has 6 characters instead of 5 like Fighters Pass 1. That's a long grasp for straws, however, and I don't seriously believe nor endorse it.

Sora exists in this weird limbo state that relies on Disney, and I simply can't come to a conclusion about how they'd act. On one hand, Nintendo and Disney are solid business partners, and have been for years. On the other hand, Disney is a ruthless mega-corporation with a legal team known first for their hardheadedness, and depending on when Nintendo began negotiations their chances could range from possible at best to completely impossible, with only a thin time frame for the former to occur. As much as I want him, I can't favorably argue for his chances over a character that would be easier for Nintendo to obtain, despite the net hype that they would gain by including Sora over such a character. If this were speculation for Pass 3, I would personally give Sora favorable chances.

However, in this essay I'm discussing Pass 2, and as of right now I'm personally not getting my hopes up. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, and if Sora gets into Smash you can be sure I'll react with as much hype as I had for Joker, if not more. But for now I have entire the Kingdom Hearts series on my Playstation, and I'm more than content with that.

Next time I'll be wrapping up the series by discussing the Bravely series and Neku from The World Ends With You. I'll also provide some closing thoughts before compiling the essays together into a master post. It might be a while between then as I want to complete my Platinum run of Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Re:Mind DLC,

Mushroomguy12 · Jul 11, 2020

Paying my respects today. Grateful for everything he's done for Gaming.

Five years ago my boss, mentor and friend #SatoruIwata passed away. His words and creations touched so many of us. I continue to think about him every day. pic.twitter.com/QbJzjePHjM
— Reggie Fils-Aimé (@Reggie) July 11, 2020

His words of wisdom are those to live by every single day. Whilst most CEOs fire large amounts of staff when company profits are low, he purposely took a pay cut in order to avoid laying off large amounts of workers. He was a beautiful soul.

KillerCage · Jul 11, 2020

tehponycorn said:
The series recently saw two new games announced, those being Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road, a rebranding of the Kingdom Hearts mobile game, and Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory, the Kingdom Hearts' series long overdue Theatrym counterpart. MoM (which is a rather cheeky abbreviation for fans up to date on the series) also marks the debut of Kingdom Hearts on the Nintendo Switch, which is simultaneously surprising and not surprising at all, given the precedent of Kingdom Hearts "spinoffs" (there are no spinoffs in this series), such as 358/2 Days, Re:Coded, and Dream Drop Distance appearing first on Nintendo consoles.

I know I'm taking this out of context but when I saw MoM, I immediately thought of that OTHER game that has the same abbreviation.

DaybreakHorizon · Jul 11, 2020

KillerCage said:
I know I'm taking this out of context but when I saw MoM, I immediately thought of that OTHER game that has the same abbreviation.

View attachment 278066

The abbreviation actually does mean something in-series, and I'm actually kinda pissed because it's so overt.

Melody of Memories
Master of Masters (confirmed to appear in-game)

SharkLord · Jul 11, 2020

tehponycorn said:
Following yesterday's Geno essay, I present the next part of:

The Second Square Enix Character Argument

To catch up on the series so far, please refer to:

Part 1: Introduction, Nier, and Gex

Part 2: Final Fantasy, Lara Croft, and Crono

Part 3: Geno

This time I'll be covering Sora. While I was supposed to cover him alongside Geno, this essay more than surpassed my expectations. The outline started about as large as my outline for Geno, and I expected the essays to be about similar in length. However, as I expanded on the outline it just kept growing. This essay clocks in at over 4,300 words, which is about 2/3 of the entirety of my original Ultimate Square Enix Character Argument. This is my most comprehensive character argument, and could possibly be the most comprehensive character argument for Sora so far. I put a lot of work into this one, so I hope you all enjoy! Without further ado:

Like with most of the characters I've written on in this series, I've previously written on Sora, most prominently in my 2018 Ultimate Square Enix Character Argument. In that, I widely defended his chances like the Sora fan I am. This time around, I plan on taking a more objective look to his chances in Smash. You can refer to my previous argument for some points on the strength of the KH series at the time, as I'll mainly be taking a look at the current circumstances of the KH series. Some of this argument will be recycled from my earlier essay, however, as some of the points play a part in the argument going forward. I'll be divvying this essay up into three sections (plus a bonus section in the middle), named after the topics they'll be covering.

The Status of the Kingdom Hearts Series

To put it briefly: the Kingdom Hearts series is doing better now more than ever.

To start, Kingdom Hearts 3 smashed series sales records by selling 5 million units in less than 2 weeks, and debuted on sales charts at number 1, above Capcom's much-anticipated Resident Evil (also known as Biohazard in Japan) 2 remake. To put that into perspective, by February, KH3 exceeded sales of Kingdom Hearts 2 by over 80% within the same time frame. Undoubtedly this is, in part, due to the fact that Kingdom Hearts 3 was the first game to break Kingdom Hearts' large Playstation exclusivity by also releasing on Xbox at the same time as PS4. This was followed by Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, or, without the long convoluted names: the rest of the Kingdom Hearts series up to this point.

People are being exposed to the Kingdom Hearts' now more than ever given its large accessibility on modern consoles. This is further exacerbated by the large sales games in the series have seen. Seriously. You can get the entire series for like, $60 (not counting KH3's DLC expansion, which is worth additional $30). That's the same price as Pokémon Sword or Shield plus the expansion pass. I don't know about you, but when faced with the choice between more Pokémon except it's soulless or over a decade's worth of great action RPGs (like, 7 full games), the decision's obvious. But I digress

The series recently saw two new games announced, those being Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road, a rebranding of the Kingdom Hearts mobile game, and Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory, the Kingdom Hearts' series long overdue Theatrym counterpart. MoM (which is a rather cheeky abbreviation for fans up to date on the series) also marks the debut of Kingdom Hearts on the Nintendo Switch, which is simultaneously surprising and not surprising at all, given the precedent of Kingdom Hearts "spinoffs" (there are no spinoffs in this series), such as 358/2 Days, Re:Coded, and Dream Drop Distance appearing first on Nintendo consoles. Regardless, this shows that Square Enix at least acknowledges the Switch as a platform for Kingdom Hearts games going forward, assuming the Switch can handle them.

The Kingdom Hearts series was already performing relatively well, selling over 24 million units as of November 2017 (which is now 32 million units as of June 2019), but over time the series has only gained traction, to the point where it's now one Square Enix and Disney's predominant series. At the very least, it has enough reputation and notoriety to warrant inclusion in Smash.

Disney

Hoo boy, we've got a lot to cover here.

I don't think Disney needs any introduction. For better or for worse, you'd have to be living under a rock to not know what Disney is. Furthermore, it's common knowledge that for all intents and purposes, Disney owns the legal rights to all original content in the Kingdom Hearts series, Sora included. If Sora is to be included in Smash, Disney is going to play an essential role in negotiations for them.

Which throws a wrench into any sort of speculation about Sora, because no one knows how to predict Disney in this regard.

A lot of users are skeptical of negotiations succeeding, in large part due to Disney. Smashboard users NonSpecificGuy and PlayerOneTyler have spoken of their experiences working with Disney, and how difficult Disney's legal team is to work with. One of them spoke about how difficult obtaining Kingdom Hearts content for Disney Infinity, a game developed internally within Disney, was. If it's difficult for an internal team to gain access to Kingdom Hearts content, then Nintendo, an outside company, is going to be facing a steep uphill battle for Sora in Smash.

However, that was circa 2018. Since then, I would argue that the climate within Disney has changed favorably for Sora's chances.

I'm going to be linking a lot to this summary of popular Kingdom Hearts youtuber HMK's interview with Disney of Japan Vice President and General Manager Justin Scarpone (I've already linked to it once before this), since it's the best primary source with which to discuss how Disney might act in negotiations for Sora. This is a rather old source, however, and I'll discuss how things may or may not have changed since then.

Scarpone talks quite a bit about the process of how negotiations for Sora would go down. To condense the process, it goes as such:

Nintendo approaches Disney for negotiations

Assuming fan demand exists, approval from Normura and Square Enix would be required

Assuming the above conditions are met, Disney seriously considers the offer.

Assuming that Disney accepts the offer, they would then work alongside Nintendo to represent Sora accurately in Smash.

The first part is relatively straightforward. Nintendo approaches Disney and asks to use Sora, upon which negotiations begin. Whether Nintendo has approached Disney (or would approach Disney knowing the potential uphill battle they face) and would approach Disney again assuming negotiations have failed in the past (which I personally believe has happened) is a large question, and one that I honestly don't know the answer to.

The next part of negotiations relies on fan demand, and I would even venture to argue that the first part–Nintendo approaching Disney–also largely relies on such. This asks the question of whether or not Sora has significant fan demand, to which the answer is yes. There is significant fan demand for Sora, and there has been such dating back to Ballot era in 2016. The Kingdom Hearts community has posted Sora in Smash throughout the years. The aforementioned posts were from my previous Square Enix Character Argument, and these are taken more recently from the Kingdom Hearts subreddit. These are just the more prominent posts; I assure you that many more exist. The dedicated Kingdom Hearts community has largely rallied behind Sora in Smash, and is a significant source of fan demand for Sora.

Not to say that fan demand for Sora doesn't exist otherwise. On the contrary, significant support for Sora also exists within the dedicated Smash Community, and he consistently manages to score among the highest spots on fan polls for the most requested or anticipated Smash characters. Needless to say, there's more than enough fan demand to justify both Nintendo approaching Disney and beginning negotiations for Sora in Smash.

Next is approval from Square Enix. It's important here to note the role that Square Enix has the legal rights for Nintendo, which I believe is often understated. While Disney, for all intents and purposes, owns the rights to Kingdom Hearts original content, they're engaged in a gentleman's agreement with Square Enix and Normura wherein Disney always goes to them for approval on Kingdom Hearts appearing significantly outside of the series. This is something they've honored since the start of the series, cancelling a potential Kingdom Hearts cartoon based on the original game "so as to not jeopardize the relationship between Square Enix & Disney as they began to expand the franchise," as well as cancelling a Disney developed Kingdom Hearts mobile game, likely for similar reasons. Needless to say, this agreement is very important to Disney.

This raises the question of whether or not Square Enix would approve. The short answer: More than likely yes.

For one, Sakurai and Normura have an incredibly strong business relationship after working on Cloud in Smash, with Sakurai even personally congratulating Normura for the Kingdom Hearts series' 15th anniversary. Additionally, Square Enix executive officer and Kingdom Hearts co-creator Shinji Hashimoto supports Sora in Smash too, as evidenced by this now deleted tweet. Square Enix would very likely not be an obstacle to Sora's inclusion.

With approval from Square Enix, Disney would then seriously consider the proposal from Nintendo. Here's the most uncertain step in the grand scheme of things. The question now is whether or not Disney would approve the proposal. While I don't believe I have enough information to accurately predict as such, I'll lay out some of the factors that I believe would play into this.
Let's start with the business relationship between Nintendo and Disney.

It's actually pretty good. Disney and Nintendo's relationship dates back to the Pre-NES days in 1959, when Nintendo made playing cards and board games with using Disney properties. This actually boosted Nintendo's reputation and got them accepted into the Tokyo and Osaka Stock Exchanges, which allowed them to develop further as a business. Similar to Square Enix, Nintendo's picked up the publishing for multiple Disney licensed games throughout the years, including Mickey's Racing Adventure, Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, and the Disney Magical World series among others. In the past Disney properties have been prominent releases on Nintendo systems, such as the Epic Mickey and Spectrobes series respectively, and a large amount of Disney licensed games are exclusive to Nintendo systems (largely due to the large install base of children, their intended audience with such titles).

Weirdly enough, Disney also created an online game and social network service for their games on the DS? I actually remember using it for a Club Penguin spinoff game, but it's definitely among one of the weirder aspects of Disney and Nintendo's history. In the past they've also worked together on televised media, such as co-developing a game show about the Nintendo Switch and having the Smash for Wii U EVO 2017 finals televised on Disney XD. More recently, Disney has released notable exclusives for the Nintendo Switch, those being Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 and Disney Tsum Tsum Festival. Their Switch exclusivity certainly stands out given that Disney would have had a lot more to profit to gain by making these titles multiplatform. While the two seem to have recently drifted away, with Nintendo partnering with Universal for Super Nintendo World and Disney largely focusing on their movie and streaming efforts, their long history of partnerships would likely play into negotiations.

Next, let's discuss Disney and video games. Disney has had a rather complicated relationship with video games in the past. Their in-house video game development studio, Disney Interactive Studios, shut down in 2016, after which video games relating to Disney content became sparse. Furthermore, their crossovers into other media seemed purely transactional or promotional, such as Thanos in Fortnite (which appeared in Avengers Endgame), Wreck-It Ralph in Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing (likely as a result of Sonic's appearance in Wreck-It Ralph), and Wreck-It Ralph in Fortnite (to promote Ralph Breaks The Internet).

However, following the success of licensed titles such as Kingdom Hearts 3 and Star Wars Battlefront 2 (following the drama involving lootboxes), Disney has turned to a dominant strategy of licensing out their properties for game development studios to use. This is a rather recent development, with former Disney CEO Bob Iger discussing this in a February 2019 earnings call. This sentiment was more recently echoed by senior VP for games and interactive experiences Sean Shoptaw at the February 2020 DICE Summit. To further this strategy, in July 2019 Disney hired former Playstation executive John Drake as VP of business development and licensing for games, with his focus being to "help pair amazing developers and publishers with the best IP in the world." Disney's is geared up and ready to license their properties to prominent developers, which could be a significant boost for Sora's chances.

Finally, how does Disney treat the Kingdom Hearts series?

In the past, Kingdom Hearts was the red-haired stepchild kept in Disney's basement. However, KH3's success seems to have caused an internal shift within Disney, as they've started embracing the series more. Last year Sora appeared on a D23 collectable print and character costumes of Donald and Goofy in their Kingdom Hearts attire showed up at a Disneyland Halloween party. In a stream (at around the 2 hour mark), HMK discussed the surprisingly large amount of low quality licensed Kingdom Hearts merchandise, which you can find at your local Hot Topic store. While these have been around in the past (I have an old Kingdom Hearts 2 shirt that I got in the 4th grade still fits me to this day–I wear it as a pajama shirt), the quantity of such products seems to have increased as of late. Most recently, a prominent rumor of a Kingdom Hearts TV series being in the works for Disney+ has come out and basically been confirmed by multiple reputable sources. Disney is acknowledging the Kingdom Hearts series now more than ever, and seems to be attempting to capitalize off of the recent success the series has seen as much as possible. This could certainly bode well for Sora in Smash, as Disney would surely recognize the raw promotional power Smash Ultimate would have for the Kingdom Hearts series, and would seriously consider Sora's inclusion in the game.

As a side point on Disney's treatment of the Kingdom Hearts series, I'd like to highlight a point made by Scarpone in HMK's video. In it, he says that Kingdom Hearts 3 is the major focus for Disney regarding the Kingdom Hearts series, and that anything after the game's development would be more seriously considered. This would certainly make sense, given that the interview was conducted in May 2018 during the tail-end of production for KH3. It also means that negotiations pre and post-KH3 would likely play out differently for or against Nintendo.

Ultimately, I believe any point relating to Disney's role in negotiations comes down to timing. Which is why it's so difficult to answer the question of whether or not negotiations with Disney would succeed. You have to consider when Nintendo approached Disney to negotiate for Sora, and assuming that they've tried in the past and failed, whether they would try again when circumstances are more favorable.

We know character negotiations have failed in the past as stated in Sakurai's book, and knowing how difficult Disney's legal team was to work with on video games in 2016, it's not difficult to imagine Nintendo approaching Disney based on Sora's solid support in the Smash Ballot and getting rejected. If Nintendo attempted negotiations at any point prior to KH3's release, I imagine negotiations similarly falling through due to Disney. Between February - July 2019 I give Nintendo decent chances of negotiations succeeding, as around that time Disney seemed to become more open to licensing out their properties. After July 2019 I give Nintendo about the same chances of negotiations succeeding as when they went for Dragon Quest for Fighters Pass 1–not necessarily likely, but possible.

Of course, this speculation rests on a whole lot of hypotheticals. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to lineup with when Fighters Pass 2 was finalized. At latest the fighter selection for Pass 2 was decided by November 2019 (when Sakurai recorded his Byleth presentation and announced Fighters Pass 2), but if rumors about how early Pass 1 was decided on (at least in regards to Banjo being negotiated for in May 2018, months before the base game's release) is to be believed (as a side note, while I try not to use hearsay in my speculation, I believe that this fact comes from reputable enough sources to be mentioned here), it was likely much earlier. I would personally venture to guess the selections for Pass 2 were finalized by early to mid 2019.

The bottom line is this: Nintendo likely didn't have good chances for Sora when they were negotiating for Pass 2, and I personally doubt that if they tired they would succeed. I also don't know if Nintendo would try for Sora again assuming that they tried and failed at some point earlier (which I personally believe happened. Which is why I suggest this:

Tinfoil Hat tiem

If you'll just give me a second to put this on...

View attachment 278033

This is a longshot in the dark, and this is not backed by any sort of evidence whatsoever. This is more so just a fun "what if" that I think could happen in 1 out of 14,000,605 futures. If there's a point to attack in this essay, this is not one of them, as this point is not serious at all, nor will I seriously advocate for it as more than a tinfoil hat theory if pressed.

Anyways, as well all know, Fighters Pass 2 has 6 fighters instead of 5. This fact was prominently introduced and discussed in Byleth's Sakurai Presents presentation. I believe that this could be due to the fact that negotiations for a character who had previously been rejected (which we know has occurred due to Sakurai's book) suddenly became available, and Nintendo jumped on it. There is precedent for such a thing occurring in the development of a Smash game, as Sonic was a late addition to Brawl, being added 2 years after the newcomer list had initially been decided. While the exact reason for this has seemingly never been stated, it's common speculation that this was due to Sega initially rejecting the request, and then walking back on it later due to the immense hype surrounding Brawl (this Source Gaming article says as such, but does not link back to a primary source which makes me hesitant to completely believe it).

I think you can see where this is going.

Sora had immense popularity during the ballot period, with the Kingdom Hearts community rallying together for Sora's inclusion. It's not hard to believe that Nintendo tried for Sora then, but negotiations fell through for one reason or another. They drop the issue until Fighters Pass 2, when Disney has done a 180 on video games following the mass success of Kingdom Hearts 3 and is looking to promote the series in the largest gaming crossover of all time. Nintendo approaches Sakurai like they did for Dragon Quest, and they go for it despite having already decided Fighters Pass 2 in its entirety. Since it's DLC, all they have to do is tack on another fighter to the pass and promote as such.

This explanation accounts for Disney's role in negotiations while also accommodating the timeline of Fighters Pass 2 being decided. In the initial deciding, Nintendo had a very thin window to negotiate with Disney if they decided to do so, probably for the second or third time. By going outside of that timeline, however, and explaining Disney's turnaround on negotiations as being due to a desire to capitalize off the success of the Kingdom Hearts series after KH3, you can justify Sora's inclusion as the special sixth fighter in Fighters Pass 2.

Of course, I completely acknowledge the sheer amount of logical leaps and mental gymnastics needed to reach such a conclusion. This certainly doesn't hold up to Occam's Razor, which would sooner accept that negotiations for Sora either haven't occurred or failed in the past, and that this Fighters Pass has 6 characters because Fighters Pass 1 was incredibly successful, Nintendo wanted to add more characters, and it just so happened to work out to 6 characters instead of 5. However, I think this theory is worth mentioning, at the very least as a fun little thought.

Counterarguments

I'd also like to acknowledge two common counterarguments. The first being that Sora would have to bring Disney content with him, which would complicate negotiations as Disney would be overprotective of their intellectual properties. This largely argument relies on either ignorance of the series or personal opinion on what Kingdom Hearts is, as there's enough original content from Kingdom Hearts to include without so much as touching Disney properties.

This is most prominently showcased in Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover, a movie retelling of the significant events of Kingdom Hearts χ, which is integral to the overarching plot of the Kingdom Hearts series. Disney worlds aren't brought up at all in the story; instead it relies solely on original content to carry the story, and it works. Furthermore, the finale of Kingdom Hearts 3 (where pretty much the entire story takes place) uses no Disney content aside from the presence of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in some of the final battles. While Disney content is important to the Kingdom Hearts series, it is not a necessary requirement.

Sora's Kingdom Key, which contains the Mickey ears as a key chain, could be altered or replaced to remove the mention. The key chain could be replaced with the Smash logo, or Sakurai could even design a new Keyblade for Smash specifically (which would actually be really cool). Furthermore, instead of the Kingdom Key, Shooting Star, which was prominently featuring in KH3's marketing alongside the Kingdom Key (and shows up in story cutscenes), or Oathkeeper and/or Oblivion, fan favorite Keyblades relevant to Sora's character could be used in place of the Kingdom Key. This is supposing the Mickey ears keychain is important, which it doesn't seem to be as evidenced by it appearing in other crossovers featuring Sora, such as his appearance in World of Final Fantasy's DLC.

Spirits could draw from the Heartless, Nobodies, Unversed, the other Warriors of Light (minus Mickey), Organization XIII, characters from Kingdom Hearts χ, etc. Stages could draw from Kingdom Hearts original worlds like Traverse Town, The End of the World, Castle Oblivion, Twilight Town, The World That Never Was, The Land of Departure, or Scala ad Caelum among others. Music could take from the large variety of music that plays in these worlds, or from the bevy of boss music used throughout the series (I'd love to see them use the remixes from KH3's Limit Cut episode, all of which are amazing).

Furthermore, this argument rests on the hypothetical of Disney being stingy with all of their intellectual properties in negotiations, which may or may not be true. At this point, however, the Kingdom Hearts series has enough of a unique identity to stand on its, which it seems to be attempting going forward if the Secret Episode of Kingdom Hearts 3 is to be believed. Nintendo and Sakurai could faithfully represent the series without so much as touching other Disney properties if need be.

Second, I'd also like to address the supposed disconfirmation of Sora by former Game Informer editor Imran Khan, who is known to have insider sources. This was pure speculation on his part, and he later went on to say he personally believes Sora is a contender for the "next big Smash Ultimate Character" alongside Master Chief. His speculation isn't necessarily surprising, as even I would say it's likely that negotiations for Sora have been attempted and fell through in the past. Regardless, this is a non-point based on the kneejerk reaction people has to Khan's statement immediately preceding him saying the next big character is Sora or Master Chief.

In Closing

I genuinely have no clue how likely or unlikely Sora is. In my (Kingdom) heart of hearts I want to believe in him, but I have no clue about how Disney plays into his chances, nor do I believe I have enough information to confidently speculate as such. If negotiations for him were to occur now, I'd say feel favorably for his chances, but as Disney just seems to have turned around on video games now, I don't know if negotiations could've been successful when deciding Fighters Pass 2, which was likely negotiated for in early-mid 2019. Furthermore, there's the unanswered question of whether Nintendo would try for Sora again after negotiations for him have likely been attempted before and fell through.

Hence why I suggest my tinfoil hat theory, as it satisfies the conditions for negotiations on Sora for Fighters Pass 2 to succeed by going outside of the timeline of Fighters Pass 2 being initially decided, justifying why it'd succeed compared to before, as well as explaining why Fighters Pass 2 has 6 characters instead of 5 like Fighters Pass 1. That's a long grasp for straws, however, and I don't seriously believe nor endorse it.

Sora exists in this weird limbo state that relies on Disney, and I simply can't come to a conclusion about how they'd act. On one hand, Nintendo and Disney are solid business partners, and have been for years. On the other hand, Disney is a ruthless mega-corporation with a legal team known first for their hardheadedness, and depending on when Nintendo began negotiations their chances could range from possible at best to completely impossible, with only a thin time frame for the former to occur. As much as I want him, I can't favorably argue for his chances over a character that would be easier for Nintendo to obtain, despite the net hype that they would gain by including Sora over such a character. If this were speculation for Pass 3, I would personally give Sora favorable chances.

However, in this essay I'm discussing Pass 2, and as of right now I'm personally not getting my hopes up. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, and if Sora gets into Smash you can be sure I'll react with as much hype as I had for Joker, if not more. But for now I have entire the Kingdom Hearts series on my Playstation, and I'm more than content with that.

Next time I'll be wrapping up the series by discussing the Bravely series and Neku from The World Ends With You. I'll also provide some closing thoughts before compiling the essays together into a master post. It might be a while between then as I want to complete my Platinum run of Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Re:Mind DLC,

A very good, comprehensive list. Something I'd like to note is that we might actually get some degree of Disney characters with Sora, as a loophole or a grand finale. We've already gotten Dracula, a public domain character with a specific incarnation from Castlevania. It's entirely possible that Sakurai/Nintendo could decide the Kingdom Hearts incarnations are fine because they were made specifically for a video game, and aren't the playable representation. Not saying it's likely, per se, but I think it's a possibility.

The big issue is unlike Dracula, who's in the public domain, or hypothetically Geralt, who became popular because of his game, the Disney cast are something everyone knows from animation, and not a game. I personally believe Disney is a big part of Kingdom Hearts, since that's what it started with, and Sakurai has stated that Smash has a lot of respect for the beginning of the series (The interview was about Mega Man and Simon, for the record).

The thing is that Sakurai only said no to characters who are explicitly not a video game property, and hasn't gone into detail about gray areas. As such, Sora's chances vary between highly likely or impossible, depending on the content he'd come with and Sakurai's stance on that content. Guess we just need to wait and see.

StarBot · Jul 11, 2020

Swamp Sensei said:
Just saying guys....

Black Knight being an echo of Ike is a laughable idea. Black Knight's movement is consistently slow, deliberate and bulky. Just look at how he moves as an AT. Can you imagine him doing the flips for Aether or zooming around with Quick Draw?

He wouldn't even be a semiclone unless you REALLY stretch interpretation.

You are absolutely correct, but you have to remember that nobody here has play Fire Emblem, or how it's actual characters world's and role function

If the character is a teenager / young adult male and have a sword = FE Bad

Any variable different than that = FE Good

Black Knight is a older man with sword, but he's bulky and a powerhouse

So according to Smashboards, he's alright in our book

DaybreakHorizon · Jul 11, 2020

SharkLord said:
A very good, comprehensive list. Something I'd like to note is that we might actually get some degree of Disney characters with Sora, as a loophole or a grand finale. We've already gotten Dracula, a public domain character with a specific incarnation from Castlevania. It's entirely possible that Sakurai/Nintendo could decide the Kingdom Hearts incarnations are fine because they were made specifically for a video game, and aren't the playable representation. Not saying it's likely, per se, but I think it's a possibility.

The big issue is unlike Dracula, who's in the public domain, or hypothetically Geralt, who became popular because of his game, the Disney cast are something everyone knows from animation, and not a game. I personally believe Disney is a big part of Kingdom Hearts, since that's what it started with, and Sakurai has stated that Smash has a lot of respect for the beginning of the series (The interview was about Mega Man and Simon, for the record).

The thing is that Sakurai only said no to characters who are explicitly not a video game property, and hasn't gone into detail about gray areas. As such, Sora's chances vary between highly likely or impossible, depending on the content he'd come with and Sakurai's stance on that content. Guess we just need to wait and see.

There's a significant difference between Dracula, a public domain property, and Disney's characters, who Disney built their legal team to explicitly keep out of the public domain.

Verde Coeden Scalesworth · Jul 11, 2020

One thing to note is that Brawl's Chronicle didn't have any issue mentioning non-game specific games like one of the Mickey Mouse games. Cameos are not the same as playable. There's little reason why the Mickey Keychain would be an issue. Full out cameos like spirits/AT's/Final Smashes and even taunts/victory screens are a lot bigger in comparison. Considering Sakurai had no issues with non-game references with one of the anime costumes on Terry himself? These small references aren't a big deal. It still requires licensing, but it's doubtful Sakurai would actually try to get the Keychain changed for something tiny like that.

Now the game variation characters are still possible, but that's at the end of the day a matter of licensing, the core reason why non-game 3rd parties weren't actually plausible(and may never be). Since the issue is still licensing either way, nothing really changes because they're a game original design. It's still Mickey Mouse, who is going to be costly to license. If he wasn't costly to license, it'd be easy to have a cameo regardless if it's the original version or the KH variant. The difference isn't "game", it's "money used".

Likewise, this wouldn't change much for money needed for KH OC's beyond Sora. They're still going to cost a lot because it's a Disney IP and they charge a lot. It's going to be clearly less because it isn't their biggest characters, but Sora is also huge and would cost a lot alone. So either way, if Sakurai wants Sora, he's paying a ton of money. That also means he might not be able to feasibly get the character as is.

kevinthedot · Jul 11, 2020

StarBot said:
Black Knight is a older man with sword, but he's bulky and a powerhouse

So according to Smashboards, he's alright in our book

Speaking of bulky powerhouses, anyone else hoping we get a DLC character that's the opposite sometime this pass?

Like, all the DLC characters so far have been either medium or slow. The only one that's "fast" is Joker and even he's not something like Fox tier in speed/weight and Arsene makes him more of a heavy hitter like most of the others.
I want to see one of these DLC characters with their gimmicks that's built more fully as a lightweight speedy character. Not sure who'd really fit that though out of the commonly requested options.

Perkilator · Jul 11, 2020

Beth Uriel said:
One thing to note is that Brawl's Chronicle didn't have any issue mentioning non-game specific games like one of the Mickey Mouse games. Cameos are not the same as playable. There's little reason why the Mickey Keychain would be an issue. Full out cameos like spirits/AT's/Final Smashes and even taunts/victory screens are a lot bigger in comparison. Considering Sakurai had no issues with non-game references with one of the anime costumes on Terry himself? These small references aren't a big deal. It still requires licensing, but it's doubtful Sakurai would actually try to get the Keychain changed for something tiny like that.

Now the game variation characters are still possible, but that's at the end of the day a matter of licensing, the core reason why non-game 3rd parties weren't actually plausible(and may never be). Since the issue is still licensing either way, nothing really changes because they're a game original design. It's still Mickey Mouse, who is going to be costly to license. If he wasn't costly to license, it'd be easy to have a cameo regardless if it's the original version or the KH variant. The difference isn't "game", it's "money used".

Likewise, this wouldn't change much for money needed for KH OC's beyond Sora. They're still going to cost a lot because it's a Disney IP and they charge a lot. It's going to be clearly less because it isn't their biggest characters, but Sora is also huge and would cost a lot alone. So either way, if Sakurai wants Sora, he's paying a ton of money. That also means he might not be able to feasibly get the character as is.

Just curious; if Dive to the Heart was a stage, how would Donald and Goofy’s pictures on Sora’s Station of Awakening be affected? I’m talking about this image:

Verde Coeden Scalesworth · Jul 11, 2020

Perkilator said:
Just curious; if Dive to the Heart was a stage, how would Donald and Goofy’s pictures on Sora’s Station of Awakening be affected? I’m talking about this image:
View attachment 278072

I honestly doubt they'd change it unless it costs too much money to keep. Disney would also have to be okay with changing it despite being a very tiny cameo.

So it could go either way. It's obviously not a cameo like the keychain. It's closer to a victory screen, where it's a proper character cameo and also something that fits more with Sakurai not using non-game 3rd party characters more closely. Nods that barely are there may be more acceptable to him. We don't really see anything besides "references" that are also for video game first series too. Donkey Kong's Yeti costume is pretty clearly a nod to Eddy the mean old Yeti from the cartoon, but that's still a game franchise first. Same with Terry's costume. On the other hand, Megami Tensei the franchise in general started off as novels, and Persona is a game series only spin-off(in a sense similar to KH), but it doesn't show off the non-game stuff at all in Smash itself. But even with the similarities, the above examples show that referencing non-game stuff is still fine at times. It's probably more of a case of easy licensing factors with Terry than it's some hard rule.

So it goes back to what I said. The question would be money and Disney being okay with it being removed. If they're going to charge little just cause of those cameos, and would prefer it there, there's little reason to leave it out. They're still cameos at the end of the day, and there's no denying that Disney animation is a very important part of the KH franchise. It is true, as said by another, that Sakurai really cares about the roots of a series on its own. So I can easily see Disney content being in there as long as it doesn't cost way too much.

Dinoman96 · Jul 11, 2020

Beth Uriel said:
One thing to note is that Brawl's Chronicle didn't have any issue mentioning non-game specific games like one of the Mickey Mouse games. Cameos are not the same as playable. There's little reason why the Mickey Keychain would be an issue. Full out cameos like spirits/AT's/Final Smashes and even taunts/victory screens are a lot bigger in comparison. Considering Sakurai had no issues with non-game references with one of the anime costumes on Terry himself? These small references aren't a big deal. It still requires licensing, but it's doubtful Sakurai would actually try to get the Keychain changed for something tiny like that.

I don't think Chronicles really mean much either way.

Like here's a fun little fact: the PAL version of the Chronicles actually has several of Rare's Nintendo published games on it: Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, etc. And well, obviously this was years before Nintendo/Sakurai would of been allowed to put Banjo in Smash.

Nekoo · Jul 11, 2020

tehponycorn said:
Following yesterday's Geno essay, I present the next part of:

The Second Square Enix Character Argument

To catch up on the series so far, please refer to:

Part 1: Introduction, Nier, and Gex

Part 2: Final Fantasy, Lara Croft, and Crono

Part 3: Geno

This time I'll be covering Sora. While I was supposed to cover him alongside Geno, this essay more than surpassed my expectations. The outline started about as large as my outline for Geno, and I expected the essays to be about similar in length. However, as I expanded on the outline it just kept growing. This essay clocks in at over 4,300 words, which is about 2/3 of the entirety of my original Ultimate Square Enix Character Argument. This is my most comprehensive character argument, and could possibly be the most comprehensive character argument for Sora so far. I put a lot of work into this one, so I hope you all enjoy! Without further ado:

Like with most of the characters I've written on in this series, I've previously written on Sora, most prominently in my 2018 Ultimate Square Enix Character Argument. In that, I widely defended his chances like the Sora fan I am. This time around, I plan on taking a more objective look to his chances in Smash. You can refer to my previous argument for some points on the strength of the KH series at the time, as I'll mainly be taking a look at the current circumstances of the KH series. Some of this argument will be recycled from my earlier essay, however, as some of the points play a part in the argument going forward. I'll be divvying this essay up into three sections (plus a bonus section in the middle), named after the topics they'll be covering.

The Status of the Kingdom Hearts Series

To put it briefly: the Kingdom Hearts series is doing better now more than ever.

To start, Kingdom Hearts 3 smashed series sales records by selling 5 million units in less than 2 weeks, and debuted on sales charts at number 1, above Capcom's much-anticipated Resident Evil (also known as Biohazard in Japan) 2 remake. To put that into perspective, by February, KH3 exceeded sales of Kingdom Hearts 2 by over 80% within the same time frame. Undoubtedly this is, in part, due to the fact that Kingdom Hearts 3 was the first game to break Kingdom Hearts' large Playstation exclusivity by also releasing on Xbox at the same time as PS4. This was followed by Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, or, without the long convoluted names: the rest of the Kingdom Hearts series up to this point.

People are being exposed to the Kingdom Hearts' now more than ever given its large accessibility on modern consoles. This is further exacerbated by the large sales games in the series have seen. Seriously. You can get the entire series for like, $60 (not counting KH3's DLC expansion, which is worth additional $30). That's the same price as Pokémon Sword or Shield plus the expansion pass. I don't know about you, but when faced with the choice between more Pokémon except it's soulless or over a decade's worth of great action RPGs (like, 7 full games), the decision's obvious. But I digress

The series recently saw two new games announced, those being Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road, a rebranding of the Kingdom Hearts mobile game, and Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory, the Kingdom Hearts' series long overdue Theatrym counterpart. MoM (which is a rather cheeky abbreviation for fans up to date on the series) also marks the debut of Kingdom Hearts on the Nintendo Switch, which is simultaneously surprising and not surprising at all, given the precedent of Kingdom Hearts "spinoffs" (there are no spinoffs in this series), such as 358/2 Days, Re:Coded, and Dream Drop Distance appearing first on Nintendo consoles. Regardless, this shows that Square Enix at least acknowledges the Switch as a platform for Kingdom Hearts games going forward, assuming the Switch can handle them.

The Kingdom Hearts series was already performing relatively well, selling over 24 million units as of November 2017 (which is now 32 million units as of June 2019), but over time the series has only gained traction, to the point where it's now one Square Enix and Disney's predominant series. At the very least, it has enough reputation and notoriety to warrant inclusion in Smash.

Disney

Hoo boy, we've got a lot to cover here.

I don't think Disney needs any introduction. For better or for worse, you'd have to be living under a rock to not know what Disney is. Furthermore, it's common knowledge that for all intents and purposes, Disney owns the legal rights to all original content in the Kingdom Hearts series, Sora included. If Sora is to be included in Smash, Disney is going to play an essential role in negotiations for them.

Which throws a wrench into any sort of speculation about Sora, because no one knows how to predict Disney in this regard.

A lot of users are skeptical of negotiations succeeding, in large part due to Disney. Smashboard users NonSpecificGuy and PlayerOneTyler have spoken of their experiences working with Disney, and how difficult Disney's legal team is to work with. One of them spoke about how difficult obtaining Kingdom Hearts content for Disney Infinity, a game developed internally within Disney, was. If it's difficult for an internal team to gain access to Kingdom Hearts content, then Nintendo, an outside company, is going to be facing a steep uphill battle for Sora in Smash.

However, that was circa 2018. Since then, I would argue that the climate within Disney has changed favorably for Sora's chances.

I'm going to be linking a lot to this summary of popular Kingdom Hearts youtuber HMK's interview with Disney of Japan Vice President and General Manager Justin Scarpone (I've already linked to it once before this), since it's the best primary source with which to discuss how Disney might act in negotiations for Sora. This is a rather old source, however, and I'll discuss how things may or may not have changed since then.

Scarpone talks quite a bit about the process of how negotiations for Sora would go down. To condense the process, it goes as such:

Nintendo approaches Disney for negotiations

Assuming fan demand exists, approval from Normura and Square Enix would be required

Assuming the above conditions are met, Disney seriously considers the offer.

Assuming that Disney accepts the offer, they would then work alongside Nintendo to represent Sora accurately in Smash.

The first part is relatively straightforward. Nintendo approaches Disney and asks to use Sora, upon which negotiations begin. Whether Nintendo has approached Disney (or would approach Disney knowing the potential uphill battle they face) and would approach Disney again assuming negotiations have failed in the past (which I personally believe has happened) is a large question, and one that I honestly don't know the answer to.

The next part of negotiations relies on fan demand, and I would even venture to argue that the first part–Nintendo approaching Disney–also largely relies on such. This asks the question of whether or not Sora has significant fan demand, to which the answer is yes. There is significant fan demand for Sora, and there has been such dating back to Ballot era in 2016. The Kingdom Hearts community has posted Sora in Smash throughout the years. The aforementioned posts were from my previous Square Enix Character Argument, and these are taken more recently from the Kingdom Hearts subreddit. These are just the more prominent posts; I assure you that many more exist. The dedicated Kingdom Hearts community has largely rallied behind Sora in Smash, and is a significant source of fan demand for Sora.

Not to say that fan demand for Sora doesn't exist otherwise. On the contrary, significant support for Sora also exists within the dedicated Smash Community, and he consistently manages to score among the highest spots on fan polls for the most requested or anticipated Smash characters. Needless to say, there's more than enough fan demand to justify both Nintendo approaching Disney and beginning negotiations for Sora in Smash.

Next is approval from Square Enix. It's important here to note the role that Square Enix has the legal rights for Nintendo, which I believe is often understated. While Disney, for all intents and purposes, owns the rights to Kingdom Hearts original content, they're engaged in a gentleman's agreement with Square Enix and Normura wherein Disney always goes to them for approval on Kingdom Hearts appearing significantly outside of the series. This is something they've honored since the start of the series, cancelling a potential Kingdom Hearts cartoon based on the original game "so as to not jeopardize the relationship between Square Enix & Disney as they began to expand the franchise," as well as cancelling a Disney developed Kingdom Hearts mobile game, likely for similar reasons. Needless to say, this agreement is very important to Disney.

This raises the question of whether or not Square Enix would approve. The short answer: More than likely yes.

For one, Sakurai and Normura have an incredibly strong business relationship after working on Cloud in Smash, with Sakurai even personally congratulating Normura for the Kingdom Hearts series' 15th anniversary. Additionally, Square Enix executive officer and Kingdom Hearts co-creator Shinji Hashimoto supports Sora in Smash too, as evidenced by this now deleted tweet. Square Enix would very likely not be an obstacle to Sora's inclusion.

With approval from Square Enix, Disney would then seriously consider the proposal from Nintendo. Here's the most uncertain step in the grand scheme of things. The question now is whether or not Disney would approve the proposal. While I don't believe I have enough information to accurately predict as such, I'll lay out some of the factors that I believe would play into this.
Let's start with the business relationship between Nintendo and Disney.

It's actually pretty good. Disney and Nintendo's relationship dates back to the Pre-NES days in 1959, when Nintendo made playing cards and board games with using Disney properties. This actually boosted Nintendo's reputation and got them accepted into the Tokyo and Osaka Stock Exchanges, which allowed them to develop further as a business. Similar to Square Enix, Nintendo's picked up the publishing for multiple Disney licensed games throughout the years, including Mickey's Racing Adventure, Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, and the Disney Magical World series among others. In the past Disney properties have been prominent releases on Nintendo systems, such as the Epic Mickey and Spectrobes series respectively, and a large amount of Disney licensed games are exclusive to Nintendo systems (largely due to the large install base of children, their intended audience with such titles).

Weirdly enough, Disney also created an online game and social network service for their games on the DS? I actually remember using it for a Club Penguin spinoff game, but it's definitely among one of the weirder aspects of Disney and Nintendo's history. In the past they've also worked together on televised media, such as co-developing a game show about the Nintendo Switch and having the Smash for Wii U EVO 2017 finals televised on Disney XD. More recently, Disney has released notable exclusives for the Nintendo Switch, those being Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 and Disney Tsum Tsum Festival. Their Switch exclusivity certainly stands out given that Disney would have had a lot more to profit to gain by making these titles multiplatform. While the two seem to have recently drifted away, with Nintendo partnering with Universal for Super Nintendo World and Disney largely focusing on their movie and streaming efforts, their long history of partnerships would likely play into negotiations.

Next, let's discuss Disney and video games. Disney has had a rather complicated relationship with video games in the past. Their in-house video game development studio, Disney Interactive Studios, shut down in 2016, after which video games relating to Disney content became sparse. Furthermore, their crossovers into other media seemed purely transactional or promotional, such as Thanos in Fortnite (which appeared in Avengers Endgame), Wreck-It Ralph in Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing (likely as a result of Sonic's appearance in Wreck-It Ralph), and Wreck-It Ralph in Fortnite (to promote Ralph Breaks The Internet).

However, following the success of licensed titles such as Kingdom Hearts 3 and Star Wars Battlefront 2 (following the drama involving lootboxes), Disney has turned to a dominant strategy of licensing out their properties for game development studios to use. This is a rather recent development, with former Disney CEO Bob Iger discussing this in a February 2019 earnings call. This sentiment was more recently echoed by senior VP for games and interactive experiences Sean Shoptaw at the February 2020 DICE Summit. To further this strategy, in July 2019 Disney hired former Playstation executive John Drake as VP of business development and licensing for games, with his focus being to "help pair amazing developers and publishers with the best IP in the world." Disney's is geared up and ready to license their properties to prominent developers, which could be a significant boost for Sora's chances.

Finally, how does Disney treat the Kingdom Hearts series?

In the past, Kingdom Hearts was the red-haired stepchild kept in Disney's basement. However, KH3's success seems to have caused an internal shift within Disney, as they've started embracing the series more. Last year Sora appeared on a D23 collectable print and character costumes of Donald and Goofy in their Kingdom Hearts attire showed up at a Disneyland Halloween party. In a stream (at around the 2 hour mark), HMK discussed the surprisingly large amount of low quality licensed Kingdom Hearts merchandise, which you can find at your local Hot Topic store. While these have been around in the past (I have an old Kingdom Hearts 2 shirt that I got in the 4th grade still fits me to this day–I wear it as a pajama shirt), the quantity of such products seems to have increased as of late. Most recently, a prominent rumor of a Kingdom Hearts TV series being in the works for Disney+ has come out and basically been confirmed by multiple reputable sources. Disney is acknowledging the Kingdom Hearts series now more than ever, and seems to be attempting to capitalize off of the recent success the series has seen as much as possible. This could certainly bode well for Sora in Smash, as Disney would surely recognize the raw promotional power Smash Ultimate would have for the Kingdom Hearts series, and would seriously consider Sora's inclusion in the game.

As a side point on Disney's treatment of the Kingdom Hearts series, I'd like to highlight a point made by Scarpone in HMK's video. In it, he says that Kingdom Hearts 3 is the major focus for Disney regarding the Kingdom Hearts series, and that anything after the game's development would be more seriously considered. This would certainly make sense, given that the interview was conducted in May 2018 during the tail-end of production for KH3. It also means that negotiations pre and post-KH3 would likely play out differently for or against Nintendo.

Ultimately, I believe any point relating to Disney's role in negotiations comes down to timing. Which is why it's so difficult to answer the question of whether or not negotiations with Disney would succeed. You have to consider when Nintendo approached Disney to negotiate for Sora, and assuming that they've tried in the past and failed, whether they would try again when circumstances are more favorable.

We know character negotiations have failed in the past as stated in Sakurai's book, and knowing how difficult Disney's legal team was to work with on video games in 2016, it's not difficult to imagine Nintendo approaching Disney based on Sora's solid support in the Smash Ballot and getting rejected. If Nintendo attempted negotiations at any point prior to KH3's release, I imagine negotiations similarly falling through due to Disney. Between February - July 2019 I give Nintendo decent chances of negotiations succeeding, as around that time Disney seemed to become more open to licensing out their properties. After July 2019 I give Nintendo about the same chances of negotiations succeeding as when they went for Dragon Quest for Fighters Pass 1–not necessarily likely, but possible.

Of course, this speculation rests on a whole lot of hypotheticals. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to lineup with when Fighters Pass 2 was finalized. At latest the fighter selection for Pass 2 was decided by November 2019 (when Sakurai recorded his Byleth presentation and announced Fighters Pass 2), but if rumors about how early Pass 1 was decided on (at least in regards to Banjo being negotiated for in May 2018, months before the base game's release) is to be believed (as a side note, while I try not to use hearsay in my speculation, I believe that this fact comes from reputable enough sources to be mentioned here), it was likely much earlier. I would personally venture to guess the selections for Pass 2 were finalized by early to mid 2019.

The bottom line is this: Nintendo likely didn't have good chances for Sora when they were negotiating for Pass 2, and I personally doubt that if they tired they would succeed. I also don't know if Nintendo would try for Sora again assuming that they tried and failed at some point earlier (which I personally believe happened. Which is why I suggest this:

Tinfoil Hat tiem

If you'll just give me a second to put this on...

View attachment 278033

This is a longshot in the dark, and this is not backed by any sort of evidence whatsoever. This is more so just a fun "what if" that I think could happen in 1 out of 14,000,605 futures. If there's a point to attack in this essay, this is not one of them, as this point is not serious at all, nor will I seriously advocate for it as more than a tinfoil hat theory if pressed.

Anyways, as well all know, Fighters Pass 2 has 6 fighters instead of 5. This fact was prominently introduced and discussed in Byleth's Sakurai Presents presentation. I believe that this could be due to the fact that negotiations for a character who had previously been rejected (which we know has occurred due to Sakurai's book) suddenly became available, and Nintendo jumped on it. There is precedent for such a thing occurring in the development of a Smash game, as Sonic was a late addition to Brawl, being added 2 years after the newcomer list had initially been decided. While the exact reason for this has seemingly never been stated, it's common speculation that this was due to Sega initially rejecting the request, and then walking back on it later due to the immense hype surrounding Brawl (this Source Gaming article says as such, but does not link back to a primary source which makes me hesitant to completely believe it).

I think you can see where this is going.

Sora had immense popularity during the ballot period, with the Kingdom Hearts community rallying together for Sora's inclusion. It's not hard to believe that Nintendo tried for Sora then, but negotiations fell through for one reason or another. They drop the issue until Fighters Pass 2, when Disney has done a 180 on video games following the mass success of Kingdom Hearts 3 and is looking to promote the series in the largest gaming crossover of all time. Nintendo approaches Sakurai like they did for Dragon Quest, and they go for it despite having already decided Fighters Pass 2 in its entirety. Since it's DLC, all they have to do is tack on another fighter to the pass and promote as such.

This explanation accounts for Disney's role in negotiations while also accommodating the timeline of Fighters Pass 2 being decided. In the initial deciding, Nintendo had a very thin window to negotiate with Disney if they decided to do so, probably for the second or third time. By going outside of that timeline, however, and explaining Disney's turnaround on negotiations as being due to a desire to capitalize off the success of the Kingdom Hearts series after KH3, you can justify Sora's inclusion as the special sixth fighter in Fighters Pass 2.

Of course, I completely acknowledge the sheer amount of logical leaps and mental gymnastics needed to reach such a conclusion. This certainly doesn't hold up to Occam's Razor, which would sooner accept that negotiations for Sora either haven't occurred or failed in the past, and that this Fighters Pass has 6 characters because Fighters Pass 1 was incredibly successful, Nintendo wanted to add more characters, and it just so happened to work out to 6 characters instead of 5. However, I think this theory is worth mentioning, at the very least as a fun little thought.

Counterarguments

I'd also like to acknowledge two common counterarguments. The first being that Sora would have to bring Disney content with him, which would complicate negotiations as Disney would be overprotective of their intellectual properties. This largely argument relies on either ignorance of the series or personal opinion on what Kingdom Hearts is, as there's enough original content from Kingdom Hearts to include without so much as touching Disney properties.

This is most prominently showcased in Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover, a movie retelling of the significant events of Kingdom Hearts χ, which is integral to the overarching plot of the Kingdom Hearts series. Disney worlds aren't brought up at all in the story; instead it relies solely on original content to carry the story, and it works. Furthermore, the finale of Kingdom Hearts 3 (where pretty much the entire story takes place) uses no Disney content aside from the presence of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in some of the final battles. While Disney content is important to the Kingdom Hearts series, it is not a necessary requirement.

Sora's Kingdom Key, which contains the Mickey ears as a key chain, could be altered or replaced to remove the mention. The key chain could be replaced with the Smash logo, or Sakurai could even design a new Keyblade for Smash specifically (which would actually be really cool). Furthermore, instead of the Kingdom Key, Shooting Star, which was prominently featuring in KH3's marketing alongside the Kingdom Key (and shows up in story cutscenes), or Oathkeeper and/or Oblivion, fan favorite Keyblades relevant to Sora's character could be used in place of the Kingdom Key. This is supposing the Mickey ears keychain is important, which it doesn't seem to be as evidenced by it appearing in other crossovers featuring Sora, such as his appearance in World of Final Fantasy's DLC.

Spirits could draw from the Heartless, Nobodies, Unversed, the other Warriors of Light (minus Mickey), Organization XIII, characters from Kingdom Hearts χ, etc. Stages could draw from Kingdom Hearts original worlds like Traverse Town, The End of the World, Castle Oblivion, Twilight Town, The World That Never Was, The Land of Departure, or Scala ad Caelum among others. Music could take from the large variety of music that plays in these worlds, or from the bevy of boss music used throughout the series (I'd love to see them use the remixes from KH3's Limit Cut episode, all of which are amazing).

Furthermore, this argument rests on the hypothetical of Disney being stingy with all of their intellectual properties in negotiations, which may or may not be true. At this point, however, the Kingdom Hearts series has enough of a unique identity to stand on its, which it seems to be attempting going forward if the Secret Episode of Kingdom Hearts 3 is to be believed. Nintendo and Sakurai could faithfully represent the series without so much as touching other Disney properties if need be.

Second, I'd also like to address the supposed disconfirmation of Sora by former Game Informer editor Imran Khan, who is known to have insider sources. This was pure speculation on his part, and he later went on to say he personally believes Sora is a contender for the "next big Smash Ultimate Character" alongside Master Chief. His speculation isn't necessarily surprising, as even I would say it's likely that negotiations for Sora have been attempted and fell through in the past. Regardless, this is a non-point based on the kneejerk reaction people has to Khan's statement immediately preceding him saying the next big character is Sora or Master Chief.

In Closing

I genuinely have no clue how likely or unlikely Sora is. In my (Kingdom) heart of hearts I want to believe in him, but I have no clue about how Disney plays into his chances, nor do I believe I have enough information to confidently speculate as such. If negotiations for him were to occur now, I'd say feel favorably for his chances, but as Disney just seems to have turned around on video games now, I don't know if negotiations could've been successful when deciding Fighters Pass 2, which was likely negotiated for in early-mid 2019. Furthermore, there's the unanswered question of whether Nintendo would try for Sora again after negotiations for him have likely been attempted before and fell through.

Hence why I suggest my tinfoil hat theory, as it satisfies the conditions for negotiations on Sora for Fighters Pass 2 to succeed by going outside of the timeline of Fighters Pass 2 being initially decided, justifying why it'd succeed compared to before, as well as explaining why Fighters Pass 2 has 6 characters instead of 5 like Fighters Pass 1. That's a long grasp for straws, however, and I don't seriously believe nor endorse it.

Sora exists in this weird limbo state that relies on Disney, and I simply can't come to a conclusion about how they'd act. On one hand, Nintendo and Disney are solid business partners, and have been for years. On the other hand, Disney is a ruthless mega-corporation with a legal team known first for their hardheadedness, and depending on when Nintendo began negotiations their chances could range from possible at best to completely impossible, with only a thin time frame for the former to occur. As much as I want him, I can't favorably argue for his chances over a character that would be easier for Nintendo to obtain, despite the net hype that they would gain by including Sora over such a character. If this were speculation for Pass 3, I would personally give Sora favorable chances.

However, in this essay I'm discussing Pass 2, and as of right now I'm personally not getting my hopes up. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, and if Sora gets into Smash you can be sure I'll react with as much hype as I had for Joker, if not more. But for now I have entire the Kingdom Hearts series on my Playstation, and I'm more than content with that.

Next time I'll be wrapping up the series by discussing the Bravely series and Neku from The World Ends With You. I'll also provide some closing thoughts before compiling the essays together into a master post. It might be a while between then as I want to complete my Platinum run of Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Re:Mind DLC,

Nice try.
But I still have my trap card that Disney are corporate Nazis.

Also surprised you didn't talk about how Disney has been more and more lenient about crossing it's IP over recently, when in the past year we got Sora in two Final Fantasy Mobile Games, Thanos in Fortnite, Avenger in it too roaming around alongside Batman Themed Skins etc etc.

DaybreakHorizon · Jul 11, 2020

Nekoo said:
Nice try.
But I still have my trap card that Disney are corporate Nazis.

Also surprised you didn't talk about how Disney has been more and more lenient about crossing it's IP over recently, when in the past year we got Sora in two Final Fantasy Mobile Games, Thanos in Fortnite, Avenger in it too roaming around alongside Batman Themed Skins etc etc.

I mentioned it a little bit, but pre-new Disney corporate licensing strategy Disney's crossovers seemed largely transactional. Disney gets something, their partner gets something. Thanos in Fortnite is due to Fortnite in Endgame, for instance.

Nowadays Disney is more open to just licensing their properties though, which is why I give Sora relatively good chances if negotiations were to occur now

Beth Uriel said:
Likewise, this wouldn't change much for money needed for KH OC's beyond Sora. They're still going to cost a lot because it's a Disney IP and they charge a lot. It's going to be clearly less because it isn't their biggest characters, but Sora is also huge and would cost a lot alone. So either way, if Sakurai wants Sora, he's paying a ton of money. That also means he might not be able to feasibly get the character as is.

I honestly doubt it'd be too costly. Based off my intuition, I feel the costs would be about as much as Dragon Quest.

Now, it's possible for negotiations to succeed. The real question is whether Nintendo goes for it.

Verde Coeden Scalesworth · Jul 11, 2020

tehponycorn said:
I honestly doubt it'd be too costly. Based off my intuition, I feel the costs would be about as much as Dragon Quest.

Now, it's possible for negotiations to succeed. The real question is whether Nintendo goes for it.

I don't think cost will definitely be a problem, but that's the only thing really keeping Sora out beyond Nintendo simply having higher priorities for a character to begin with, imo.

I think negotiations are very likely to succeed if they try.

WeirdChillFever · Jul 11, 2020

Thing is, Sakurai might not just have to ask permission for “Kingdom Hearts”, but for each element specifically. When DuckTales started production, showrunner Frank Angones explained on his Twitter how certain elements were off the table for the team to use, including Mickey but also the Rescue Rangers (who they, for both instances, eventually got permission for how they appear in the show), but I fear that getting Sora might not mean getting the rest of Kingdom Hearts (excluding the overt Disney parts) for relatively little effort. What’s okay with one Disney legal department might not fly with their higher-ups.

In the words of Alex Hirsch:

Disney is big enough to disagree with Disney over what Disney should do about Disney
— Alex Hirsch (@_AlexHirsch) November 15, 2019

SNEKeater · Jul 11, 2020

Icedragonadam said:
I mean would MC even be affordable with Volume's 2 lower budget?

Well, I guess that's a good question, but we don't know the budget for the second pass.
I honestly don't think Chief would be considerably expensive than Banjo, the exception being if Chief suffers from a similar case to Hero: copyright mess, multiple owners, or something like that, which isn't the case as far as I know.

In any case, if Nintendo wants Master Chief or any other character from Microsoft, I'd assume they would be aware that getting another Microsoft owned IP wouldn't be cheap.

Latyon · Jul 11, 2020

Chief is not nearly interesting enough to be a character in Smash. His value is vastly overstated by the few weirdos who read Halo books.

Megadoomer · Jul 11, 2020

Latyon said:
Chief is not nearly interesting enough to be a character in Smash. His value is vastly overstated by the few weirdos who read Halo books.

That seems entirely subjective, and a rather poor justification for saying that a character shouldn't be in Smash.

Perkilator · Jul 11, 2020

Latyon said:
Chief is not nearly interesting enough to be a character in Smash. His value is vastly overstated by the few weirdos who read Halo books.

I personally don't care for Halo myself and I still think that's a pretty disgusting generalization.

Fine if you don't think Master Chief is very interesting, but not all his fans are weirdos.

Animegamingnerd · Jul 11, 2020

SNEKeater said:
Well, I guess that's a good question, but we don't know the budget for the second pass.
I honestly don't think Chief would be considerably expensive than Banjo, the exception being if Chief suffers from a similar case to Hero: copyright mess, multiple owners, or something like that, which isn't the case as far as I know.

In any case, if Nintendo wants Master Chief or any other character from Microsoft, I'd assume they would be aware that getting another Microsoft owned IP wouldn't be cheap.

Halo is completely own by Microsoft, so I don't think copyright issues are problem. The problem Chief faces by far is a lack of popularity in Japan, the Xbox and Halo sell pretty terribly, at least with Banjo his games sold decently in Japan during the N64, but Halo's popularity is borderline nonexistent in Japan.

SNEKeater · Jul 11, 2020

Latyon said:
Chief is not nearly interesting enough to be a character in Smash. His value is vastly overstated by the few weirdos who read Halo books.

Vastly overstated by a few weirdos... I don't think so.
I mean, if you think Chief isn't interesting enough to have an original and interesting moveset, that's okay I guess, but him and Halo aren't overstated at all, even if the franchise has lost a bit of relevancy in comparison to the previous generation.

Edit:

Animegamingnerd said:
Halo is completely own by Microsoft, so I don't think copyright issues are problem. The problem Chief faces by far is a lack of popularity in Japan, the Xbox and Halo sell pretty terribly, at least with Banjo his games sold decently in Japan during the N64, but Halo's popularity is borderline nonexistent in Japan.

True. If I'm not mistaken Halo does have a small following there, or at least I recall reading that somewhere.

Personally, while I don't think he's likely, I could see Chief in Smash despite not being that popular over there. He would be sort of an exception, being a big franchise outside of Japan and being the mascot from the competition. Well, even without that, I could see one western appealing character in the pass, even if it's not popular in Japan.

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