This is true. I do feel like with Capcom focusing on making characters more individualized and/or the increasing costs of game development that there's a good chance that there won't be as many characters as there were in Ultra Street Fighter 4.
So before I felt that my favorite character, Dudley, was almost a definite lock considering he's 1) very unique in his playstyle 2) been in SF4 and SFxT and 3) probably the 2nd most popular Street Fighter 3 character there is. However, now that he isn't in the launch roster and likely not in the first wave of DLC, my prediction for his inclusion has dropped to just likely. And that's if they keep up the pace of 6 DLC characters a year which they might not do if SFV isn't as successful as they expect it to be.
So my other favorites that are more longshots, Q and Eagle, are even less likely to make it in now.