People are still claiming Bayonetta didn't win the ballot halfway through the Ultimate Fighters Pass releases.
Come on.
I love Bayonetta in Smash, but her circumstances are suspicious as shit.
https://www.sourcegaming.info/2018/07/03/bayo106/. The base code for her character was in the game 2 weeks after the ballot started. So first off, they would have had to ignore the rest of the entire ballot and just go with a character that performed well at the beginning if we assume that "winning" the ballot was a completely true comment. But the problem is, this is just the first known appearance of the data, not the actual origins of the data that would lead to Bayonetta, so she would have had to have been worked on prior to this update going live. Most updates are pushed out some time after they have been completed as opposed to the exact moment they are, so you can drop a few more days off of that tally. Which is even more of the actual run time of the ballot ignored. The poll was open until October 3rd, 2015. Data for Bayonetta was in the code as far back as June.
Not to mention, you wouldn't start work on a character unless you knew you had the license. That absolutely has to be part one of any deal, and it's not like Sega or Platinum would realistically need any proof of concept to incorporate her since Nintendo was funding her at the time, and that would be the only explanation for that if they didn't have a license. At a bare minimum, by the time Bayonetta's code appeared in the data, she had to be licensed out and a concept established that required her being built off of Zero Suit Samus as the base. Which pushes the date of the decision to include her back even further overall.
Either Nintendo ignored the overwhelming majority of their data in favor of just going with a character that performed well in the beginning and was "realizable" (which has so much wiggle room it's not even funny), or they had always intended for her to be DLC and she just worked out well enough for them. There's not really alternatives here to be honest. And again, I say this as a massive Bayonetta fan so it's not from some long term vendetta against her inclusion like some people.
The problem is that as time goes on, Sakurai's vision is a very restrictive one in an industry whose progress in terms of representation is too slow. In cases like this, being more proactive with the options that do exist would be appreciated. To stick to your guns regardless of the problems that arise is pure stubbornness, something that Sakurai has demonstrated a few times (see the aforementioned example with Corrin). Of course, there are iconic women in gaming that should be utilized. But at the same time, we should also look towards characters who may not necessarily be the faces of their IPs. Like other fighting game developers, Sakurai needs to demonstrate a bit more flexibility.
And either way you slice it, Bayonetta won among the realizable candidates, as in the others couldn't get in for one reason or another.
See above for Bayonetta.
Sakurai has a specific vision for Smash that operates as a crossover of major gaming IPs. I can't fault anyone for that or call that vision restrictive when he's achieving stuff no other developer on the planet can really come close to. To a lot of people, what you're describing as a problem is not one. That's a big issue. I've argued about just pushing for basic meaningful representation in the form of someone like Lara Croft and been shot down before. People are more interested in supporting their favorite characters than representation, and Smash is the breeding ground for that attitude. It's not stubbornness that leads Sakurai to including, it's a combination of business (companies have their preferences and mascots that represent them best in their minds, like Terry over other female options) and pleasing the most fans/people. Elma vs Rex is the classic example. People push for Elma as "the better option" for representation purposes, but Xenoblade Chronicles X is kind of the odd duck out for a lot of people and a great deal of people prefer Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and its characters. Rex is the one who polls super well, making it much less likely that Elma will get picked (Shame in my mind, but that's on the community). You keep claiming Sakurai needs to be more flexible "like other fighting games," but that doesn't work the same way.
Smash cannot create new fighters. A brand new Street Fighter character of color or of another gender is inherently equal to a white one in the creation process, so there's very little lost outside of some whiny brats possibly complaining about inclusion...
But when you start talking Terry vs. Nakoruru, or a third party character vs. a significantly more niche first party? There's tons of weight attributed to them that fundamentally changes what you're including and why. Smash's entire premise is inflexible by nature of that. There are some good options, but a great deal of them have certain opportunity costs too that are more likely to upset people (people pissed that X or Y came before Z) or be less in the interest of the involved parties (Square Enix likely prefers that Dragon Quest be in Smash over Tomb Raider given what each means to them). Again, I keep coming back to this fact that I think treating Smash like other fighting games is the wrong call. And I just haven't seen a convincing argument from you on this point yet as to why Smash should be treated along the same standards (or even higher it seems) when it seems to be a largely unique entity from those titles.
You're way too fixated on Corrin's alt. situation though. This isn't malice or stubbornness, it's just how Corrin was in Smash for Wii U, and was super easy to port over more than likely. It's not like Sakurai didn't have a million other things to keep track of and work on for the game, and I don't imagine he gave a second of thought to the idea that people would be upset about which alt. was the primary one (and I doubt he fundamentally treats them differently like you do to begin with).
