Don't give a shit. Clones are useless characters that to me scream lazy development. Can't make it into a full character? Make it into an alt costume, it'll have the same uses and not waste whatever time was put into making it into a clone that could have gone to something more productive. Unless the story behind the character is that he's a literal clone but has different moves (I think K' from SNK is supposed to be something like this?) then don't bother with putting him in. To me there's no argument that justifies a clone, the only clone I ever felt was acceptable was Luigi, but even now there's no point in him being a clone again when he has his own franchise and this entire marketing 'year' based around him.
Obviously it doesn't fast track some other character to be put into the roster, it's not a guarantee. I'd still rather have a smaller roster than one filled with unnecessary, unimaginative clones. It's awful, and before somebody from the hardcore fighting community comes in here to discuss how they aren't really clones because of different properties in their moves and whatnot. It doesn't matter. That only matters to the FGC of which there seems to be a large number who barely even consider Smash to be a real fighting game. To most of the other people, characters like Falco and Wolf are both clones of Fox, Ganondorf is a clone of C. Falcon, and Toon Link one of Link.
This gen more than any they have no excuses for clones. They have all the time they want to finish this game, they have Namco helping them, many of the characters have movesets which can be created or updated due to new game releases, they can even add them in later through DLC for fucks sake. So that bullshit argument about filling out a roster is done this gen. Clones in the new smash is just lazy game development.
EDIT: That comment on costumes is bullshit Sakurai. Different costumes can make an old character feel fresh again.
