So we might as well make this more productive. I'll try to argue one sticking point I'm sure got BritishGuy a little frustrated.
Why get rid of Xenoblade? It's an active franchise that Nintendo has a lot of investment in. It's a multi-million seller franchise. It's well liked, both in Smash and out of it. Even among JRPG fans they are considered influential and beloved. Xenoblade 2 was considered a big enough deal to be shown during the Switch's pre launch showing. Xenoblade 3 was considered big enough to be a direct closer. I don't think Nintendo thinks of it as anything other than a valuable IP. It's even one of the IPs that Nintendo said had immense growth during the Switch era (along with Metroid and Pikmin). There's no reason to get rid of the franchise entirely. It would definitely be a priority for the next game to include.
This is indeed a way more productive conversation to have. I acknowledge that cutting Xenoblade is harsh - and quite honestly, it's not going to happen (because as much as I try to push the conversation away from considering this, marketing is always going to come into play).
The reason I cut it is complicated - and I should pre-empt by saying that given unlimited devtime and resources, I'd be in favor of pretty much every Nintendo IP having a representative, Xeno included. I just think that Smash has painted itself into a corner where drastic cuts are going to be necessary. That being said, my values are squarely in the corner of representing things with long-running histories and I think Nintendo's own stable of IP has things that have gone overlooked for far too long - if it's a crime to not have Xenoblade, it's certainly a crime to not have a Nintendo Wars rep, recency and current-day relevance be damned. It's also hard to evaluate because I think much of the success Xenoblade re-releases and sequels have seen (which, in my view, is kind of overstated - when Pikmin is outselling you it's hard to appeal to popularity or sales as a positive) is precisely
because of the Smash inclusion - and now that gets used as the justification for the inclusion in a circular manner.
From a marketing perspective - yes, it should probably have a representative. But I'm not a marketing exec - I'm a fan, and there's so many pockets of Nintendo history that may be fairly obscure but are nonetheless deeply influential - Xenoblade cut from my roster is less of a result of having a bone to pick with the series and moreso just that it isn't quite spectacular enough in any singular category (in my opinion) to warrant inclusion. I may have overcorrected due to feeling like Shulk got in prematurely (thus sending us down this path to begin with) - but I'll even concede that if Xenoblade continues for another generation and maintains / grows - Shulk probably should have eventually gotten in at some point. I would maybe even give the nod to KOS-MOS, despite less Nintendo connection, just to at least nod to the wider context of Xeno as a whole (and because she has a tendency to pop up as the crossover representative in other games), but that's more or less personal preference.
TL;DR - I would rather look backwards and fill in the blanks we've missed over the years and give newer stuff time to cook and truly prove itself to be relevant and timeless long-term before jumping the gun.
