Yeah with Travis in, Grasshopper Manufacture has joined in as well.
That really leaves us with Level-5 and Natsume I think? and probably some other Japanese companies that haven't received any acknowledgement yet that slipped my mind? (As well as the Touhou guy)
There are apparently rumours for a Koei Tecmo character floating around (For a while now I think) and there are four spots left so yeah, we're in a pretty tight spot right now...
Very true! It is nice to see Travis in in some form... I get why people are disappointed, but I think we need to start accepting Mii Costumes as better then not being in Smash...
I mean, Natsume is technically an American company now and seems kind of unlikely for a rep to me, unless they were to re-unite with Marvelous as Nintendo really wants Story of Seasons to use the original translation in Smash... which I kind of doubt Marvelous would be thrilled to do...
Otherwise, Level-5 is definitely the most suspect complete absence to me. Spike Chunsoft is also completely missing in spite of doing the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, but Danganronpa or Shiren the Wanderer seems easily to costume away at some point if they really needed a rep (which I'd be fine with, in spite of my biases). Otherwise the only companies I can think of who have directly made Nintendo games and have nothing in Smash are Brace Yourself Games (Cadence of Hyrule) and MAGES (the upcoming Famicom Detective remake), both of whom feel... less-then-probable. It'd be very funny to see reaction videos for Steins;Gate in Smash, but, uh, not betting on that one.
Otherwise, Koei Tecmo and Ubisoft both have made Nintendo games and now have content in Smash without playable characters. Koei has been rumored forever at this point, so it'll be interesting to see if that pans out and if it pans out with the ninja everyone expects. Ubisoft is in a weird position and I honestly don't know how to evaluate them with Steve having been successfully snuck under our noses.
And if we count companies that have had Nintendo IP collabs in their games, then Bethesda and Marvelous have had Nintendo collabs and only have Mii-Costumes/Spirits in Smash, while Activation-Blizzard and Warner Bros Games both have nothing in Smash...
This, uh, is a list of companies that is notably more then four... and I kind of doubt we'd be getting four third parties from new companies... and this is only from companies that came to me off of the top of my head.
We, uh, may have some competition, but I do still feel like Level-5 and Koei are the biggest "So, uh, why don't they have content in Smash based on their original IPs?" at least?