No, I've read your post.
I'm not going to sugarcoat it; it's a steaming pile of bull****.
Ooo, Mr. Snippy. What's so important about this leak to you that you care to defend it tooth and nail like that? If you're tired of hearing people pick it apart and make valid arguments, then y'know, you don't gotta be here. But I digress.
All right. Here we go. Using your own information:
Sal did not post this on his site because he wasn't able to verify the information, but he did jokingly post the list a day before SSB4's reveal on NeoGAF as a "prediction" just in case it was correct.
Yeah, I've seen the post in question, but there's nothing about his post that says 'Hi I'm jokingly posting this list.'. For the umpteenth time, I'll quote Sal Romano's 'post'.
"My unlikely predictions: Little Mac, Pac-Man, Animal Crossing Guy, Mega Man, Wii Fit Trainer, Mii."
What about that says joke? What about that at all says that he got information from someone else? Exactly, there's nothing there. But let's give Sal Romano the benefit of the doubt. What if he DOES have a leaker?
Sal told me that as soon as Wii Fit Trainer was revealed, he ran and posted the list on his site because he knew at that point it couldn't have been a lucky guess from his source.
Okay. So, where's the smoking gun? Where's the smoke at all? No e-mail posted, no confirmations from anyone, no proof besides a guy saying 'Hey, trust me!'. This isn't just me picking nits here for the sake of picking nits. If someone asks me to trust them, I'm already immediately skeptical.
Second, it makes the assumption that the informant saw Greninja and just didn't know how to identify it.
Y'know, instead of the more reasonable assumption that ALL THE INFORMANT KNEW WAS LITERALLY THAT THERE WAS GOING TO BE A "POKEMON FROM X/Y".
How is that so hard to grasp?
Oh, it's easy to grasp, except for the fact that he names pretty much every other character on the lists specifically by name. That doesn't seem even the least bit shady to you? At all?
I've even given the guy the benefit of the doubt by figuring out where the guy worked in Nintendo just based on the information we have about the leaker (very little), on the assumption there IS a leaker. Pretty much, we came to the conclusion that no matter where he worked in Nintendo, he would've had access to the names of the fighters, we would've known it was specifically Greninja and, as I've said a billion times before, we'd not be here having this argument. But I digress.
The informant has been sitting on info from at least a week before E3 2013, months before Sakurai would have decided upon Greninja as the X/Y Pokémon. The second set of info given isn't necessarily fresh from the grill. We know for a fact a similar case happened in Brawl; Ike was originally just "character from Fire Emblem" when Sakurai laid out the roster for Brawl and decided upon Ike later.
I have a hard time believing that Sakurai would've waited that long to have figured out what new Pokemon representative there was going to be, especially since Gamefreak is apparently pretty picky about what should possibly be in the game. At the very least, the guy should've had access to the list of possible Pokemon reps to be added if he had access to the very specific list of other newcomers, right? Similarly, there were two leaks, so we can't really assume the guy had that second leak sat on before E3 2013, too, 'cause the information we DO have doesn't support it, and we don't have any legitimate proof from anyone otherwise.
Third, the argument about Little Mac, Pac-Man, and Miis not showing up at E3?
You bring up a good argument here. It's fair to give people the benefit of the doubt when they get everything else accurate, but the problem here is that Pokemon X/Y released and people fact checked, found out the guy was right, and hey, all's well that ends well. No-one's perfect.
We don't have that benefit; we don't even have the benefit of actual proof. Like I said before, all the proof we have is a guy posting what he says is a leak, doesn't actually say it's a leak at first, and then saying 'Hey, trust me!'. I'm just a stickler for that sort of thing. I'm naturally skeptical when I have no proof. All Sal Romano needs to do is post the e-mails and I'm done arguing, the guy's legit. We don't have those, so all I'm waiting for is Chorus Men/Shulk to drop and I'm done.
Fourth, it uses sales as a legitimate excuse as to why Shulk is unlikely among other cases. Sales figures from what most consider to be an untrustworthy source.
SALES. DON'T. ****ING. MATTER.
If they did, quite a bit of Smash's roster to this date would be MUCH different than it is now.
You're right, sales don't matter because most of the characters already in the series already have sold millions of copies of their respective games in their series. Otherwise, they're influential to Nintendo's past or blatant advertisement. There's no pattern to follow sales-wise 'cause that's never legitimately been anything to really go on, it's never factored in.
By all means, show me a couple characters in Smash that doesn't fit that criteria that hasn't sold millions of copies. The only characters that really fits that criteria is Ness and Lucas, and we can at least argue for their inclusion 'cause Japan loves Mother (and, interestingly enough, still do), and it's all about Japan when it comes to Smash, don't forget. We could also argue that Ice Climbers and Pit both fit into that niche with Ness and Lucas. So we've got four characters as the exception against a ton others.
So, the pattern here is that if it sells well, chances are it's getting a character. And, goodness, what's this? Wii Fit Trainer and Villager are both from high selling Nintendo franchises and are both confirmed to be in the game. Now look at the pattern:
Wonderful 101 sold piss poor, no Wonder Red; all signs point to Dillon's Rolling Western selling mediocre, no Dillon;
Sin & Punishment barely broke 500K across two games, no Saki;
The Legendary Starfy on DS sold better than all of those franchises combined, no playable Starfy across TWO GAMES. All four characters had potential to be playable and fun, all four characters confirmed not to be playable. You don't think sales matter now? If it doesn't, I'd like a legitimate reason why it's still not.
Untrustworthy site or not, I'd say that even if it's short a couple hundred thousand or so, I don't see that being a factor either way. Plus, I don't see any other sales figures since Nintendo loves to be secretive, so gotta work with what we've got. Most of the information besides Dillon's I can see seems to be fairly accurate.
Now, I will say it again. Wake me up when someone gives an ACTUAL GOOD CASE against the leak.
Go back to sleep. I'll come wake you up in time for E3.
".
