Been thinking on it and I'm pretty sure Wolf is more likely to come back in a updated port of Wii U. However, there is also the possibility that he might stand a better chance in a brand new game due to Sakurai's weird way of thinking.
What do you guys think?
I personally think that Sakurai might not be involved at all. Reason being, Sakurai has hinted about his next project bearing some relation to realistic weapons, by
sharing information about a model-kit that he purchased with the intent of studying the realistic rifle that came with it, and given Sakurai's apparent history of working on other projects in between the Smash installments that he's been asked and contracted to return to work on, I just get this feeling that he isn't working on the next one, for some reason.
Beyond that, we also know from Bandai-Namco's "Smash 6" job-
listing (bearing in mind that Smash 3DS is "Smash 4" and Smash Wii U is "Smash 5", according to
this interview) that they began working on something three years and five months ago (a similar amount of time to that known to have been spent on
Super Mario Odyssey and claimed to have been spent on
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and more time than the two years that it took to make Splatoon 2
from the ground up).
The times that "Smash 6" appears to have been being worked on all appear to line up with times when Sakurai was working on other projects, or was on an extended break. When it began, Sakurai was working on Smash 3DS/Wii U, and once he'd said that that project had wrapped, he ceased all development and journalism work and went on an extended break (during which time, it appeared that someone else stepped in and produced a couple more patches for Smash 3DS/Wii U, to fix some lingering problems left by the "final" 1.1.4, as he wouldn't have been available to do so due to the aforementioned break). It was after he returned from his extended break, in late December of 2016, that he shared the above information about what he was studying for his next project. Now, obviously, we have no way of knowing any more than what the information available shows, but there's also the aforementioned history of Sakurai working on other projects in between Smash installments - and, of course, there's also the fact that no series keeps the same staff forever, especially not once they've left the company and have to be brought in as an independent contractor to collaborate on future work (not to mention that it was Satoru Iwata, who was a friend of Sakurai's from the days that they worked at HAL together, who apparently always convinced him to return...).
It's worth pointing out that the "Smash 6" listing stated that they had a staff of 120 at the time, and that they wanted to hire around 80 more to work on stages, animation, characters, modes, mini-games, menus, and various other tasks*. Believe it or not, the requirement for people to work on menus is potentially noteworthy because this is something handled by Mrs. Sakurai in all projects that Sora, Ltd. (a company consisting only of Mr. & Mrs. Sakurai) is contracted for. Hiring someone else to do them would possibly suggest no involvement from Sora, Ltd..
*As an aside, I've believed since close to their release that Smash 3DS/Wii U were partly a field-test for a scalable engine for the inevitable then-upcoming hybrid console (since they share an engine that can scale across wildly differing architectures), as the market has long made it clear that portable devices rule the roost. Accordingly, I also suspect that "Smash 6" would be re-using the engine and assets in order to make a new game, but I don't believe that it would be a no-frills port of the content-light Smash Wii U, which was never the primary product.
Of course, it almost goes without saying that it doesn't take a first-party-contracted team of 200 people more than three years to make a no-frills port of the less-content-heavy game of the previous pair, and the timespan where people will tolerate no-frills ports on a new console has arguably already passed for the Switch (though some may mention Pokken Tournament DX here, it's worth pointing out that that game was obviously designed to always have a home version that mirrors the arcade one, as it's used in official events in a world where most people do not have access to arcades or other entertainment venues that might carry the arcade version). Little indie outfits, some with as few as two employees, have been showing that they can get early porting work to the Switch done within a matter of hours to a matter of days, with a fairly quick path to release after that, after all. However, this particular point is a bit outside of the matter of my belief that Sora, Ltd. may not be involved with the next game (though I did write a more-detailed
post about that over in the K. Rool support-thread a while ago).
Anyway, yeah, that's what I think.
