That's blatantly ignoring the history of that game having a rough start over the cast replacement.
People look back at the newer characters fondly nowadays, but it's revisionist to claim people favorited it over the "cool new characters" back when it was new.
See also: Soul Calibur V, which
didn't get vindicated like the SF3 series did.
I mean, sure, but that comes with the territory of new characters having to prove themselves versus established faces. Of course a character will be more popular when people have them in their hands; doesn't mean it's a bad idea to add new guys or you should prioritize veterans over new faces. Personally, even if my main gets cut, I see it as a chance to try characters I'd never look at otherwise. (Source: My Rivals of Aether main isn't in Rivals 2 and never will be, but I've been having a blast with Loxodont even though he's the polar opposite of my original main.) It's all about keeping an open mind.
This is an issue I talked about in the Next Smash thread a little bit back; this line of thinking simply does not work in the context of Smash like it does with Street Fighter or Rivals.
All of the fighters in Smash are "established faces", even the ones that are added for a new game, with Roy and Mr. Game & Watch being arguably the single sole exceptions across the series's 25 year history. The mentality of "well we can remove a swath of characters because they're unpopular" only works in the context of a game with original characters for its roster. Street Fighter can get rid of characters like Necro, Remy, Abigail, El Fuerte, Rufus etc. for unpopularity reasons, and not much is lost because those characters weren't really doing anything outside of hogging slots in their respective games. Smash characters by design are already at least somewhat popular going into their inclusion into the series, and it is very rare for a character to be outright considered controversial or expendable en masse--and usually this is because the character is either unpopular (Corrin), or taken for granted (Incineroar, Piranha Plant) within their own home series' fanbase, or is a clone character overshadowed by more popular clones and echoes (Pichu, Dr. Mario, Young Link).
As you can see, that pool of "disliked/unpopular" fighters is pretty shallow, and even then I have seen people go to bat for Doctor freaking Mario in particular.
As far as we all know, every character cut so far in Smash has predominantly been a matter of developers running out of time for inclusions, or other unforseen circumstances like hardware limitations or inability to communicate with rights-holders. To me, that is an indicator that the developers understand that dealing with Smash's roster is like playing a game of Jenga, where they have to be very careful about what they remove to keep the playerbase from becoming alienated. I'm not saying cuts shouldn't happen ever, I'm more saying that this is a series that needs to be
very careful on how it handles cuts with the precedent they have established. I would certainly be singing a different tune if, alongside the five characters who already didn't return from Melee, Brawl also cut out Ness, Jigglypuff, Sheik, Falco, the Ice Climbers, and Mr. Game & Watch to make way for more new faces, and then the game after that got rid of Lucas, Ike, ZSS, R.O.B., Captain Falcon, Snake, and a few others to make way for even more fresh blood (and also replaced Olimar fully for Alph).
My main point is that cuts in Smash are not as easy and dry as cuts in a Street Fighter, Tekken, or Rivals. Who and how many are gone next time are going to be questions that I expect Studio S to be very careful with figuring out and answering. There are some removals that would be considered easy or understandable, and I think the net can widen a little bit with the promise of being swiftly added back in post-launch, but I personally think anywhere even approaching a "reset" of the cast would be a collapse of the "Smash Jenga tower" in many people's eyes
unless it is specifically for an experimental spin-off or side game not meant to be the headlining brand new installment in the series.
