I promise I'm not meaning to single anyone out here when I say this, but why do people think that, assuming the Sal rumor is valid, that Sakurai is intentionally disregarding the fans, or that it's surprising at all? Sure, some of the newcomer choices are out of left field (Wii Fit Trainer?), but Nintendo isn't the same company is was 5-6 years ago when Brawl came out. The roster of Smash Bros has always been a reflection of where Nintendo was the previous console generation or so, and the Wii was the era of the casual. The Wii U has never been able to pull that off, and it has been that way from the start. The Wii U released in November 2012, and development on Smash Bros. started 7-8 months earlier around April-March. I'm a developer, but not a game developer, and especially for a game of this size, I'm not sure how long the planning stages last, but it's entirely possible that the poor sales of the Wii U threw a curveball in Smash Bros. development post release, or possibly even earlier.. considering the lackluster final few years of the Wii's lifecycle, maybe even from the beginning.
I've said it in other places, and I was considering writing a thread about it, but I strongly feel that this Smash Bros. game is basically a study in Nintendo marketing. I could go into depth about aspects of the game other than the leaks that prove this, but to avoid going off-topic, I will stick mostly to my thoughts on the Sal rumor(s).
Sal provided us with the following as being included in the roster: Villager, Wii Fit Trainer, Megaman, Pac-Man, Little Mac, Mii, Shulk, Palutena, Chrom, Greninja and Chorus Men (whatever that is). To say that Villager, Little Mac, Palutena and especially Megaman are not fan-favorites for this game is incredibly incorrect. Perhaps they aren't all the Diddy Kong, King Dedede, or Sonic, or whoever compared to Brawl, but they definitely are some of the fan favorites. (Villager is somewhat questionable, but pretty much only because of Sakurai's previous statements.. Pre-Brawl, Animal Crossing characters were very highly requested.) Pac-Man fits the bill for Sakurai's "legendary" status 3rd-party characters, and he's working with Namco-Bandai.. plus he'd previously appeared in Mario Kart, but I won't discuss him because it doesn't really speak to my point. Let's look at the other characters, though:
Mii - Modern Nintendo's crown jewel. These characters almost single-handedly sold the Wii, or at least kickstarted the sales of it. Whether or not it was the avatar aspect of them or simply because they were a part of Wii Sports, to say these don't help define that generation of games is almost foolish. Nintendo's goal with the Wii U was to cater to the "hardcore" crowd, but they want to keep their casual player-base, also, and Miis are basically synonymous with the casual crowd. So what do they do? They take a game largely associated with their "hardcore" crowd with Smash Bros., and bring in the Miis to draw more casual players to it. It's that simple.
Shulk - whether or not he appears in the upcoming game, X, is unknown at this time, but it's impossible for Nintendo to not recognize that Xenoblade Chronicles struck a chord with their hardcore players, which as I just said, was their goal with the Wii U. It's possible that Monolith studios and Nintendo are planning to make this series their big new IP that fans have been clamoring for, and including a reference to it in one of their already hardcore games (Smash Bros.) is a fantastic way to do that. Not to mention that Shulk is actually kind of a fan favorite character.
Chrom - Fire Emblem Awakening sold well, duh. Need I say more? They want to continue the success of one of their longest-running game franchises. Awakening was going to be the last game in the series if it didn't sell well. (Chrom, like Shulk, is also popular as well).
Greninja/Pokemon from X/Y - Something I didn't put in my initial posting, but will add to continue my point. Roy aside (and sort of Lucario), It is pretty unprecedented in Smash Bros. to have new content featured in the games.. and by that I mean, all the stages/items/characters/etc. generally, as stated above, reflect the last gen games. Pokemon X and Y is only six months old, but it has always had huge hype surrounding it as it caters to old and new fans alike. The Pokemon game doesn't really any more promotion surrounding it.. it obviously can sell itself at 12 million copies sold. Greninja is here to market FOR Smash Bros.
Chorus Men - I don't even... Since we don't really know what was meant by this, it's hard to speak on it. Rhythm Heaven could be a game Sakurai likes, or one of the lead Namco guys likes, who knows? Either way, it doesn't change the fact that it can and will help draw fans to look up what game it's from and look to the smaller game series that Nintendo has. I don't really know what to think of it, but on a personal note, I wouldn't be unhappy with him.
Plenty of things about the way this game is being shown and developed say that they're using it as a giant marketing tool (unprecedented inclusion of current game content (Pokemon X/Y, Pikmin 3, etc), linking to game websites on character pages, etc.), but at the same time, it hasn't abandoned the fans. At the end of the day, Nintendo is running a business and if they are finally seeing that using Smash Bros. to help out sales is the way to go, then all of this makes sense. Sal's rumors fully follow in line with everything I've been seeing from this game so far, and that's even more proof, in my mind at least, to the legitimacy of it. To be honest, I'm surprised they haven't already been doing that.
tl;dr - Nintendo is using Smash Bros. as a marketing tool and Sal's rumor seems even more legitimate because of it.
