Firstly, I wasn't responding to you or anyone else specifically, just voicing thoughts on where segments of the fanbase currently seem to stand. I used strong language to make a point, but sorry if you thought it was too much.
Anyway, substantial cuts or a brand-new entry does not mean a reboot, and I think there's very few out there who actually want a true reboot; but there's a lot of active fear out there surrounding the prospects of a new game that doesn't just copy over Ult, and I don't think it's well-founded. I think the best path forward is to make a new sequel in the same vein that Brawl and 4 were made, adding a healthy crop of newcomers, game modes, and other contents, and with cuts to the roster where deemed fit to facilitate that.
DLC is less content for your money basically by definition. That's it's whole point; it allows the developers to milk even greater value out of the massive resources and efforts they put down to make the main game, by catering to the subset of more dedicated fans that is willing to pay a worse dollar-to-content rate in order to get some extra stuff added on to their game. That dollar-to-content ratio would not work for selling to a wider audience, and the more of it you do, the narrower the audience gets.
You can't reduce the value of the base game to just the unique newcomers. Even if you only focus on new stuff you're getting that you didn't have before, you'd have to consider all the brand-new singleplayer content like World of Light, any updates to graphics and gameplay, and probably also any vets that weren't in 4. But even that's besides the point; you're paying $60 for the entire game, and that is giving you way more for your dollar than a DLC pack, not even close. Unless you're going to argue that Ultimate is just a port of 4 with a few more characters in it.
I don't think you have any argument here. If anything, by focusing so hard on new content when it comes to determining product value, you're further supporting the idea that it would be better to focus more on brand-new content rather than bringing back the old when building the next game. If base Ult wasn't focusing as hard on bringing back old content, it could've trounced the amount of DLC content even harder.
Of course the values of products are always going to depend on the individual, but for the average consumer there's just no contest here.
If I knew of conclusive sales data for Ult's DLC, I would provide it. But just speaking generally, interest in new content for an older game wanes over time; I feel this needs little explanation. It will fluctuate with the specific characters involved, yes. But on a macro scale, in this case potentially spanning multiple console generations with some of what I've seen, support generally declines over time.
It's difficult to be too specific without seeing the next console, but it's safe to assume said console will feature a significant power leap from the Switch. Sakurai has alluded to the similarity between the Wii U and Switch as a factor in their ability to pull off Ult's roster. But, generally, I mean the mechanical and graphical updates that happen with every new game. All the work that needed to be put into making games like Brawl on the Wii or Smash 4 on the Wii U that couldn't be erased by copy-pasting from the last one.
Ultimate may still look fine to you or me personally, but that's not what we're talking about here. I mean, Super Metroid still looks amazing to me for example but that has nothing to do with what's commercially viable for a big-budget, headliner title like Smash.
