Im pretty sure that bayonetta won the European ballot and was certainly in the top 5 spots on the other ballots... As for the real unrealizable at the time winner I got the feeling that was probably snake with wolf and ice climbers probably ranking very high too...there is probably a chance that as for wolf, they didn't wanted to put a veteran on that slot since it wouldn't been as exciting, but I'm wildly speculating there.
But yeah, I bet that cut veterans did excellent on the ballot, and probably helped Sakurai's decided the no cuts ever was a priority.
As for cloud, I don't think he done stupendous on the ballot, (probably just good) but he probably dominated smash brawl era ballot, and Sakurai's saw an opportunity to grant all that people their long delayed wishes.
It does worries me a little that Verge source claims to know how Simon Belmont fared on the ballot though, that seems like very insider info :/ or something easy to make up...
She didn't "win" the European Ballot, and by "didn't win" i mean she was barely voted at all and they used Europe as a scapegoat in order to get away with it.
They lied about that. Now you may be wondering why they said Europe out of all things, and
Zerp
explained in detial as to why:
Because the Smash communities in NA and Japan are much more united than the one/s in Europe and are easier to keep track of, in NA there's only 3 majorly spoken languages, in Japan 1, meanwhile just the European Union alone (not even the entirety of Europe) has 24 official languages, it's borderline impossible for a fanbase to keep track of all of those different regions and how they would have voted. Basically, it's the easiest to lie about because it's incredibly hard to go back and look at the evidence for all of Europe because you'd have to understand so many different languages to accurately count every different community's general opinions and if you miss even one you can be off by a large margin. Although really, it should have been obvious from the polls that Bayonetta could never hope to attain as many votes as King K. Rool or Snake, those two HAD to be "unrealizable" for it to ever make any sense.
If you had to research Bayo's popularity in Europe, it would be far more harder to do so, because they didn't speficify which European countries (which as mentioned before, has 24 languagues to figure out) were the ones that really "voted" for Bayonetta. Ironically, Bayo's games, while still selling poorly, do sell better in NA and Japan, but not enough for Bayo to be considered a "hit" among the masses, or at the very least hardcore gamers (which the Bayo series didn't even managed to do) and DEFINETLY is not enough for Bayo to became a highly requested character like other third parties (if we talked about modern Third party franchises people are aware of, most people would say Monster Hunter or Minecraft, not Bayonetta, and if we talked about Classic Franchises she doesn't even count because she debuted in 2009) but any North American (hell anyone living in the Americas) or Japan would easily take more notice of this (which is why Japan was not mentioned, because they were not going to be fooled) as opposed to Europe where there is a HUGE language (and probably cultural) barrier for people to figure it out.
The *among realizable character was nothing but a tool against legal action (since it could be considered false advertising, at least as to how it was used in the western marketing of Smash 4, which basically amounted to some Mii Costumes at best) and to make seem Bayo the "winner" by a process of elimination (which probably means that the "unrealizable characters" that were not joke votes would be used for Ultimate, sicne that game was already starting to move along, or at the very least will be used as an AT to throw fans a bone since Ultimate's Newcomer pool will be limited as stated by Sakurai and further reinforced by Vergeben)
Not only that, but "Mario" slots were discovered way back when Roy and Ryu were leaked, and those were the first hints that we were getting more DLC (later we got a third "Mario" slot). Now recently, it's been found out that those 2 Mario slots contained data of Ike and ZSS, which means they used them as a basis for Cloud and Bayonetta respectively
(ZSS's Congratulations screen in Smash Wii U's All Star mode is a
blantant reference to the Bayonetta series, where she commonly appears in artwrok and scenes where there is a Moon on the background,
even in her Smash 4 trailer, and that is NOT a coincidence)
the "Bayo was chosen two weeks during the Ballot" excuse doesn't fly, because this ZSS data on the "Mario" slot is evidence that Bayo was already on development BEFORE the Ballot even oppened (and no, guessing which characters are going to "win the Ballot" and adding them before the Ballot opens is NOT gonna work, which is why Intelligent Systems was SHOCKED to find out Lyn was so popular in the "Choose Your Legends" FE Heroes poll, because Companies should not assume what the fans want, let alone dictate to them) it's just that nobody tried to look what was inside that Mario slot until 2016, but the information dind't spread as far as it did now.
and i dind't even bought up the fact that
Sakurai was found out going to Platinum Game's studio way back in 2012, the same year Smash 4 started development. Nope, not related to Smash at all, completely a coincidence!/s
I could go on and on, but again,
Omega Tyrant
went into detail about this, and if you have any questio-you know what im just gonna quote everything he posted in the Smash Ultimate Boards that is relevent to the topic at hand:
OT said:
In detail, version 1.0.6 added some unused character slots. It was discovered sometime after the fact that these slots had movement/physics stats, and one of them had identical stats to Zero Suit Samus, while another had identical stats to Ike. The stats on these slots can then be observed to alter in each subsequent patch, and would eventually become Bayonetta and Cloud respectively (a slot would also get added in 1.0.8 that was identical to Ike, which would become Corrin).
So this revealed some interesting trivia that Bayonetta, Cloud, and Corrin started off development as Zamus and Ike clones respectively and were drastically altered from there. However more interesting, is that version 1.0.6 released only two weeks after the Ballot launched, meaning Bayonetta was planned and started development before the Ballot even launched, meaning she wasn't chosen for being the "Ballot Winner" and the Ballot ended up not being used for Smash 4 DLC at all despite that being its marketed purpose (while instead it appears the Ballot results were saved for Smash Ultimate).
OT said:
Version 1.0.6 would have existed well before it was actually released and chances are it was already finalized by the time of the direct that announced the Ballot. The patch isn't being edited and having new content added to it up to the last minute before release, every single change and every single addition has to be balanced tested and thoroughly QA'd to ensure no glitches occurred and that the version is ready and stable to be released to the masses. Additionally patches are uploaded to Nintendo's servers several days in advance of it actually going live; dataminers were repeatedly able to download and datamine the patches for changes well before they were released, even being able to play with the patch and play new content added by it (such as what happened with Roy/Ryu).
The prospect of them being able to have the time to observe some very initial Ballot results, decide Bayonetta, envision and decide her moveset/character design, complete her licensing, and start development within a two week window is an absurd proposition, even if one thinks development could have started on her before the licensing was complete. But then because of the fact version 1.0.6 existed well before it was released, that window probably never even existed in the first place, or was ridiculously small (when a 2 week window is already very small) if there was a gap between the Ballot launching and version 1.0.6 being finalized.
So yeah, there's no realistic chance that Bayonetta was an immediate "Ballot Winner" chosen off of <2 week old Ballot results that they had to hurry initial development onto version 1.0.6.
OT said:
It wasn't just that Bayo's data existed before the ballot finished, it existed in an update that released only two weeks after the Ballot launched, meaning Bayonetta (and Cloud) were already planned and being actively developed before the Ballot even launched. As for why Bayo would get chosen without the Ballot results, as Vaanrose pointed out before, Nintendo has a vested interest in the Bayonetta series being a success, considering how they got an exclusive license to her games and bankrolled her sequel being made; Bayonetta being in Smash boosts interests and sales in her series, thus Nintendo's bottom line benefits and thus they would want her in Smash (while she provides plenty enough material for Sakurai to work with). As for why not going with Cloud as the claimed "ballot winner", probably because Cloud finished sooner and thus could be released earlier, while Cloud being the "ballot winner" also isn't any more believable than Bayo being it, considering how he was treated as a impossible joke suggestion by the majority (e.g. "Cloud never been on Nintendo before no history he can't ever be in Smash!"), while Final Fantasy votes were also very scattered and no single FF character had a centralized push for them.
OT said:
To add on to what Vaanrose said, you can't just pretend they were working on 1.0.6 and adding data to it up until the very last minute before release, that is not how game development works. Every change has to be balance tested, and every change has to be bug tested, especially content additions, any change could result in a significant game-breaking glitch happening. Remember when the patch that increased shieldstun dropped and resulted in Diddy being able to become completely immune to grabs? Patches are additionally uploaded to the servers several days in advance of their actual release. So once more the actual timeframe between Ballot being announced and the ability to add Bayonetta to version 1.0.6 is in reality probably nonexistent, or extremely small if it existed at all, there wasn't a whole two week window to do it (which itself is a very small window as is to do everything to get Bayo's data on the game).
OT said:
The evidence is pretty indisputable that Bayo was decided and started development before the Ballot launched; character slots being added that use specifically Zero Suit Samus' and Ike's stats that became Bayonetta and Cloud, instead of just having Mario's stats as a mere placeholder would, and it being there in an update that released just two weeks after the Ballot launched, is not a coincidence.
The process of adding a character to an existing game's coding without breaking it isn't a no effort endeavor, even in the case it was just another Zamus with no Bayo assets applied yet. See the tremendous difficulty modders have had with trying to add new characters slots into Brawl and Smash 4 instead of just replacing existing characters.
Also, Patches (wheter be DLC or Balance patches) have to be Bug Tested, which means they have to be tested before they are released (and i DON'T know how long bug-testing takes, but this means they probably bug-tested the patch before the Ballot was released)
Quite frankly, im not really that mad since i suspected it way back in 2017, and many other users like
StormC
and
Zerp
(and many users of the K.Rool support thread) already suspected this, but we were called dumb conspiracy theorist and were silenced and mocked because of this.
But now, the evidence (indisputable and verifiable evidence i might add) is at our side. This also further reinforces the idea the Ballot is meant for Ultimate.
If anything, thanks to Vergeben's statement of Simon faring well on the Ballot, im even more confident in Simon Belmont for now.
EDIT: After reading my post again, i noticed i mentioned that the slots were found before the Ballot even openend, but that was a mistake of mine, they were found out after it Oppened. Sorry. Still, the timing heavily implies that Bayo was in development before the Ballot was even a thing.
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