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At least with Sakurai we know what bias to expect. People assume Fire Emblem “bias” is getting in the way of “insert popular Nintendo character here” getting in but we don’t know if a new producer could have more bias or if they also aren’t bias to “insert Nintendo series of choice here”.

Unfortunately we don’t know if the characters in question will make it even under a different producer. It won’t stop people within certain groups assuming the “problem” with them being included is gone. The saddest part is the grouping assumption made with both Sakurai and the fans themselves.

I don’t doubt he is bias but I’ve contemplated being in the driver’s seat and I can’t seem to figure out how to add more content for Donkey Kong, Metroid, Mother and F-Zero without effecting new franchises or Mario/Pokemon. It seems extremely hard to balance it.

To be honest I think the balancing with representation was fairer now than it ever has been in the past. Look at these categories.

New franchises
Existing franchises with new representation
Male to female ratio
Close combat to distance fighters ratio
Nintendo character to guest character ratio

At least in the first two categories, the balance is there. It just depends if you agree with the franchises chosen for increased representation.

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

Q: What about a Wario Land stage instead of a Mario Land stage?

Sakurai: *laughs*

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

Though I would’ve love to see what the Mario Land stage would’ve been like, it’s an understandable cut given the sheer amount of Mario stages in the game already. Though DreamLand is a cool stage, it seems a waste to have the gameboy stage concept be used on only one franchise and not multiple games at once.

I loved the Yoshi’s Woolly World stage and it also had the extra bonus of representing a game that hadn’t released yet. Though, the lack of Kirby’s Epic Yarn representation is kinda sad for how much I loved that game (a music track or two from the game would’ve been fine…)

Also, it’s interesting how Nintendo creates the boxart. Nice of them to put Samus in the center of the WiiU boxart and Link at the forefront of the 3DS one. It’s refreshing how Mario isn’t quite the main focus of them this time around.

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

Ok. All the info that I have about those games is from a quick online search, so I might be off in some places.

For Tekken 7: Fated Retribution, It is a separate version of the Tekken 7, using it as a base. Ideally, this version is balanced separately to include the new characters. In that case, the characters are rebalanced, and so long as you are playing Fated Retribution, you have those characters. Competitively, those games should be treated as entirely separate from each other, as they are balanced separately.

Street Fighter V: Since it is possible to buy the new characters with Fight Points instead of Zenny, the experience/effort gap is slightly lessened. Also, the fact that all of the characters are veterans (so have an established playstyle) makes said gap smaller, since experienced players can have a rough estimate of what other DLC characters are capable of.

Blazblue: Couldn’t find any useful info, so… IDK

Also, I am making the assumption that balance is top priority, and not potential profits. Obviously this isn’t true, but it’s much easier with that assumption.

From: SG Choice: Pokkén DLC Characters

I don’t see conspiracy theories stopping no matter how many questions Sakurai addresses. The number of questions people have pertaining to Smash is never ending as is, and sometimes his answers can just lead to more questions. On top of that, if people don’t get the answer they want to hear they’ll just claim Sakurai is lying through his teeth and go right back to touting whatever conspiracy theory sits best with them.

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

But at the same time it very well is strategic-
Lucina alongside Dr. Mario and Dark Pit were alts who were given different slots in the roster because they were made onto clones with play style differences… We were told that they were to kind of pad the roster in the short development time they had with nothing else to really work on and that they took a considerably smaller amount of work to make since they were balanced to whom they were cloned from and not the whole roster.

Same goes for Roy as well as being a fan favorite. Robin, Ike, and Marth are there for obvious reasons and are different from one another (Robin- Latest Lord, shows off the mage side of FE, Ike isone of the most popular lord outside of Japan also appeared in two FE titles as a major character, Marth is the original lord and “mascot” for the series.)

Corrin was a mix of promotion and potential and Intelligent Systems apparently tried really hard to show Sakurai how they could be different (probably knowing that the next smash bros game will be too far down the line to have him/her featured.)

Also the licensing and legal work costs time and money, so it is easier to work with things a company or its subsidiary owns, and with a company that is actively pushing for something to happen because they might be able to diffuse some of that workload/not having to pay royaltys/etc.
It is part of the reason Smash Run is very heavy on Kid Icarus representation-Sakurai mentioned that their models were already made with the 3DS in mind, he didn’t have to ask for permission to use the characters (Or get them Okayed that they are behaving in the way the original creator intended,) and because he admitted he designed things in Kid Icarus with Smash Bros. in mind.

The truth probably falls somewhere inbetween- He might be less worried about over representing a franchise he likes, but I don’t think he went to IS trying to add in a tone of FE characters or eagerly lobbied to add FE characters.

Fire Emblem also is one of Nintendo’s older series and has been a part of their line-up since the Famicom, so to some FE is as big of a series in Nintendo’s wheelhouse as Metroid, Zelda, Kid Icarus, Kirby, etc. and it holds the same nostalgia and prestige to them.

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

The game saves your item preferences too.

Just felt like pointing that out.

From: Why Time is the Default Option [in Smash]