Being from an indie game does not help with the already limited third party slots, as they are generally reserved for more iconic roles who have a deep history with Nintendo and/or gaming in general. The only exception to this was Bayonetta who won the ballot
I don't know what the real ranking on the Ballot was, but even according to what we heard from Nintendo, Bayonetta didn't really win the ballot.
They used two weaselly qualifications when they announced her ballot "win":
First of all, they said her placement was first worldwide among "realizable characters". We don't really know what "realizable" means, they didn't explain it. But I would guess the following issues made characters "unrealizable":
- Obviously, characters they think had design issues that prevented them from being adapted in a reasonable way (think Master Hand or Mother Brain in a jar or the Bionis from Xenoblade, as extreme examples)
- Characters that were already in the game as part of existing characters (Chrom, Toad), ATs (Dark Samus, Isabelle) or significant stage elements (Ridley)
- Characters they wouldn't be able to get the rights to within the timeframe necessary under acceptable conditions (Snake, Simon Belmont, Banjo-Kazooie)
Well, you already see several characters added to SSBU that could've been written off as "unrealizable" and could've placed higher than Bayonetta on the ballot (Snake and Ridley could well have placed higher, for example).
The other thing is that they said she placed first in Europe, top five in the US, and first worldwide. They didn't mention her placement in Japan probably because it was not good. You'd think they'd have mentioned it if she were even top ten in Japan (this also fits with her results in online polls, which were not impressive in Japan).
But we don't know whether they're being totally honest. Other issues that I think probably could've been factors could be wanting to save characters for hyping future installments of Smash (Inklings and K Rool, for example) and promotional value for other games (Bayonetta helped promote the Wii U exclusive Bayonetta 2... K Rool doesn't promote anything that we know of at the moment). Given that we also got Corrin, who nobody wanted because they didn't exist yet, I suspect that promotional considerations played a role (the evidence that Bayonetta started being worked on just two weeks into the ballot isn't 100% proof, but I wouldn't be at all surprised). Who knows what her real rank was. "Realizable" is such a weasel word that they could've excluded anyone for basically any reason ("We already made a Mii costume for the Inklings, so it's too late to add them.").
The same thing happened on his blog post, no mention of him being anything "lesser" than popular characters such as Bomberman, Lyndis, or Waluigi. So either Sakurai doesn't make a distinction between indies and triple A characters, or more likely, he doesn't care as long as they are popular.
Or even more likely, they didn't
have to talk about him being an indie, so the fact that they didn't doesn't mean anything.
Has there ever been a confirmed case of a character choking out another's chances? Much less an assist trophy blocking out a playable character from entry? That makes less sense than saying she didn't do well
in the polls despite her
topping most of them (I have actually seen this argument floating around).
You literally linked to a spreadsheet that shows Shantae not even making the top 50 in Japan. I'd also say that what's also important for character selection is whether they have global popularity - Ridley and Dark Samus are characters much more popular in the West, so there are already some newcomers that are more popular here than there. It could be that if another character did worse overall than Shantae but had broader support geographically, that character might get chosen over her, because they don't want to cater to only one continent.
The other issue is that these polls you're citing may not be representative of the overall Smash Ballot. SmashBoards or Smash Reddit users might only be a subsection of the people who responded to the Smash Ballot and probably have different tastes. Another issue is that Nintendo may have their own market research that they are using, separate from the ballot. By which I mean, scientific polls. Hell, the Smash Ballot itself provides useful information, but it is not a scientific poll, because it has
huge self-selection bias and couldn't prevent single respondents from answering multiple times (meaning that a small group of dedicated and savvy fans could skew the results by stuffing the ballot). The same thing applies to all of those online polls being used as evidence. Perhaps they count for something, but you have to apply a hefty dose of uncertainty to them rather than taking them as gospel.
And in particular, I would be skeptical when the results seem to deviate significantly from other evidence that doesn't have those skew issues. Shantae fans are not about to buy 5 extra copies of her games in order to goose her sales numbers to try to get her in Smash, so sales are not vulnerable to these issues. Shantae does fine, but it is not a blockbuster series, I don't know that any of her games even hit 500k copies sold, much less a million. Supposedly the first game only sold like 25k copies. Meanwhile, Shovel Knight has sold over 2 million copies. I wouldn't be surprised if all of the Shantae games put together don't match it. Maybe people who like Shantae, like her a lot, and Shovel Knight has less passionate fans. I'm not so sure that's true though.
But my point is that you need to consider more than one line of evidence, especially because the polls you're citing are not scientific. And other evidence does not support her being among the most popular video game characters, because if she was that popular, her games would sell better.
I'm not saying that sales proves she's not in either! But you should still consider them as another piece of evidence.
Shantae:
Chances: 100%
There should be no question that she is in the game, only how she is implemented at this point. If you paid attention you'd say the same. I'm betting on DLC personally, but I'll take an Assist Trophy if I must.
lol wut
I mean, maybe your evidence deserves some consideration. But Sakurai making little references to games like the Rathalos picture resembling a battle in Golden Sun, or that other picture resembling Shantae's games... could just be Easter eggs, rather than some secret code. I believe
this Smash 4 screenshot was considered a reference to the Nintendo Famicom Disk game
Yuyuki (first-party game, based on Journey to the West). Diddy would represent Goku in that pic (no, not that Goku, this Goku is a monkey that's the main character in Yuyuki). That was just an Easter egg for dedicated Nintendo fans, it didn't mean Goku or Yuyuki got any content in Smash. I mean, nobody was expecting him to be playable. But as a first-party character, a trophy would've made sense! Yet he got nothing, and viewing that screenshot as secret evidence would've just led you astray.
The strongest evidence we've seen so far (other than leaks) has been palette swaps being removed (Dark Samus, Chrom) and ATs (Dark Samus, Isabelle) or final smash appearances (Chrom) being suspiciously absent. None of that applies to Shantae. We have no reason yet to believe Sakurai is sending coded messages with chair colors or blog posts. She could be in, but 100%? You're
massively overreading the evidence.
If you want to say I'm giving her way too little chance, fine, but she ain't anywhere near a shoo-in, much less guaranteed.
