To simply spark some conversation, I was thinking about when we could get some info from Nintendo and it had me thinking about what Nintendo's schedule would have looked like if the pandemic didn't happen. For this I was looking at how dlc was handled in Fighters Pass 1 as well as how it was handled during Smash 4.
The first thing I did was look at how long it took for all the characters in FP1 to get released:
Joker: April 17th
Hero: July 30th
Banjo & Kazooie: September 4th
Terry: November 6th
Byleth: January 28th
Averaging out their release windows we end up with 71.5 days between the release of these characters, so roughly 2.5 months between them to make the math easy. Now lets assume the March mini Direct was always scheduled to happen and Min Min was always scheduled for June in this hypothetical of the pandemic not happening. If we look back to Smash 4's handling of dlc, Sakurai had a presentation before Nintendo's full e3 presentation and I believe it was likely to happen again this time as Sakurai has been doing full breakdowns of all the dlc characters. Now the question with this is would Min Min have released at the end of the presentation? I'm gonna say...YES! So that would have put Min Min's release within the first 10 days of June, and using this information we can hypothetically speculate rough estimates of the other Challenger Pack releases:
Min Min: Early June
Challenger Pack 7: Mid-Late August
Challenger Pack 8: Late November
Challenger Pack 9: Early February
Challenger Pack 10: Late April
Challenger Pack 11: Mid July
Now we look at the rumored info
Nazyrus
has given us and it looks like Nintendo was originally planning a November release for Golden Sun Switch. As I've stated before, I find it hard to believe Nintendo would revive a decade old IP in the middle of Smash DLC and not want to include a character from the game, so which spot is the best for Isaac or a Golden Sun character to be at?
CP7? - I would say no to this spot as it seems too early to announce Isaac/GS character nearly 3-4 months before the new game release, and of course release him more than 2 months ahead of it.
CP8? - This spot makes a lot of sense. Assuming Nintendo has their usual September Direct, they can feature Golden Sun's new game heavily and then reveal Isaac/GS character at the same time. It would be great promotion for the game and possible character.
CP9? - This spot also makes sense. From a business prospective, Nintendo knows Sony and Microsoft will be releasing their new systems in November. This has the potential to affect the sales of whatever games Nintendo plans to release at the end of the year as many gamers are saving up for those systems and might not be able to buy all the games they want at that time. So what better way to potentially cause a second surge in sales for the new Golden Sun than by announcing a new character from their game being in Smash? Sakurai's presentation would also feature scenes from the new game as it would have been out for a couple months so he wouldn't have to worry too much about possible spoilers.
CP10 & 11? - I don't think these spots make any sense for a potential GS character.
With this hypothetical of no pandemic, I would say Challenger Pack 8 and 9 are the most likely spots for Isaac or a Golden Sun character.
Now bringing things back into reality, there were insiders claiming Pikmin 3 Deluxe was originally planned for April this year, but now it is October. Of course we all know Nintendo has no issues with delaying games if they feel it's not as good as they want it to be, so it's difficult to say if the pandemic was the sole purpose for it getting a later release. So I doubt everything got pushed back to such a degree. However if some of Fighter Pass 2's characters were meant to coincide with the release of new games like we hope Isaac could potentially be...then maybe Sakurai and his team would move certain characters around if certain games got delayed. It's hard to tell as Nintendo is rarely ever open about things they haven't announced.
I'm curious to hear what you guys think. As always, hype responsibly as there is always the chance we won't get Isaac, BUT if he is scheduled I think he's Challenger Pack 8 or 9!