I honestly don't buy that and this is not directed towards you but to Sakurai and Nintendo. You mean to tell me that Dixie Kong missed
two opportunities for Smash, the same game that Nintendo is using to promote up and coming games? Tropical Freeze didn't need to be announced to be promoted, or Byleth wouldn't have made it in. This is the
one glaring flaw I have with that argument on Tropical Freeze. Sakurai does inquire about upcoming games and you mean to tell me he didn't even consider Tropical Freeze or know about it? I find that hard to believe, and then I realized Tropical Freeze is a game handled by a western developer, and that alone is enough to keep Sakurai in the dark about it
unless Nintendo goes out of their way to promote it. And as far as I'm concerned, Chrom may as well have been any other echo fighter, not necessarily Dixie Kong. Anyone else.
But enough about Fire Emblem, I also wanted to point out this little promotional thing from last year:
Bombette? In the era of Color Splash and Origami King, they pushed
Bombette of all characters, and not that there's anything wrong with Bombette, but she's probably a tertiary pick in the grand scheme of things if you're pushing your women of gaming rhetoric. You could argue that Rosalina should have been Peach and also this being more of an NoA event than a general Nintendo thing all around, but it shows how unbalanced the picks for that event were. I don't know if that was the entire selection of characters for that event but it said enough to me last year.
I don't know if Sakurai is hellbent on seeing Dixie partnered up with Diddy and anything else is heresy according to his personal interpretations of characters or whatnot, but Dixie's timing was perfect, in both Smash Four and Ultimate, especially Ultimate. They just don't have any stake or faith in Donkey Kong Country the way they do with Fire Emblem or whatever the committee wants to promote. Everything with Byleth and Fire Emblem only proves that; if Sakurai or Nintendo won't promote it, it doesn't get in. DKC's history of neglect after Rare left is well-documented. They're doing my girl dirty.
If any character from here on gets revealed and their game hasn't been released beforehand, that will tell you that a game doesn't have to be announced for its main character or any character relating to it to be considered for Smash, see both Corrin and Byleth.