Okay, so what do you gentlemen think is the reason for Sakurai not putting anyone new from Zelda yet? I'm honestly curious about some second opinions.
1. Sakurai giving priority to other characters from other franchises (i.e. Donkey Kong and Metroid, or other unrepresented franchises).
2. Most Zelda characters unfortunately having very few appearances outside of recurring characters like Link, Zelda, Ganon(dorf), Impa or Tingle, so they pretty much depend on either relevancy or fan demand. Yes, Sheik did get in the roster but she was mainly added as a transformation gimmick for Zelda and it just so happened that Ocarina of Time was still the biggest Zelda release at the time Melee was in development.
3. Sakurai might not simply be able to come up with movesets he feels like they work within Smash. Hyrule Warriors could provide with a lot of ideas but it's also a fundamentally different game than Smash is and also took a lot of liberties with many of the characters in it, and I think to a larger extent than Smash does, and what works for Hyrule Warriors doesn't necessarily work for Smash (and vice versa, obviously).
4. And speaking of fan demand, there isn't really a unified fan demand for who the next Zelda character is. At least, Metroid and Donkey Kong fans were set on having Ridley and K. Rool in the game, with Dark Samus and Dixie Kong support being much smaller in comparison. With Zelda, there are people supporting Impa, Tingle, Skull Kid, Midna, Ghirahim, Tetra, etc. to the point there is no big front runner on what is the most fan demanded Zelda character for Smash.
In case anyone brings up Fire Emblem:
1. The series hardly has any recurring characters outside of Anna, who isn't really a major character in any of her appearances. All of the characters in the game are protagonists of their own games, except maybe Lucina, but even so she's still a major character in Awakening with even a DLC storyline focusing on her not to mention her sheer popularity within the FE fandom.
2. A lot of the characters are derivative from one another. Just consider the fact that it has two echo fighters and one of them is an echo of a character who himself started as a clone and is still a semi-clone, so that's 4 characters with a variation on the exact same moveset. Even Ike and Corrin, who are more unique, still have a lot of similarities with Marth, Roy, Lucina and Chrom by having a lot of similar moves and overall design.
Creating a Smash character is much more than slapping moves and see if they work. That would be trying to build a pyramid from the top as opposed to from the base. Sakurai has stated multiple times that he works on characters from a general concept then works on the specifics. In other words, all the moves need synergy with each other and line up well with the main idea behind the character's design.
