If Golden Sun somehow couldn't get any characters in Brawl, then it probably won't get any in the next game.
Oh please, let's not go down this route of thinking that every possible series that could get into Smash somehow missed the smash boat because it didn't show up on Brawl's roster.
Brawl had 5 new series added to it's roster, Wario/ KI (retro)/ Pikmin/ Snake and Sonic. I'm willing to say they all out-ranked a lot of characters on Sakurai's "possible list" of new series.
I think it was one of the most successful new (character-driven) series that debuted between Melee and Brawl's releases too, so that makes Sakurai's statement pretty damning. The most successful games in the franchise are only going to get farther and farther away, and I don't think Dark Dawn will make any difference.
... What?
He said there weren't
many new series released between Melee and Brawl which would make picking "hard"... not that there were simply
NONE to pick from. And if anything that would help it's chances seeing as, in Sakurai's eye's, the list of new series in that time-frame to pick from is pretty short.
And on top of that ... he's talking about picking new series for Smash 4 from games released in between Melee and Brawl. A series going on to have more releases AFTER brawl surely doesn't hurt. I would say it helps.
The Wars series is big enough to get a playable character, but now it seems pretty unlikely that any of them would get in, especially since pretty much every character in the series is in sort of a limbo (their games aren't old enough to be classic, but they aren't new anymore either).
New character from the games to rep a classic/ old-as-dirt series, not something I would say is out of the question.
He was saying Golden Sun 2, the last Golden Sun game as of Brawl's release, was closer to Brawl than Golden Sun 3, the last Golden Sun as of Smash 4's release, will be to Smash 4.
He's wrong - GS2 to Brawl was 5 years, GS3 to Smash 4 will probably be 4-5 years - but that's what he was saying. Why would you think otherwise? How could Dark Dawn impact Golden Sun's chances to get a character in Brawl when Brawl came out two years earlier? Why would you even consider the possibility that that was what he was talking about?
Actually, I was saying that under the assumption that Dark Dawn didn't do very well - or at least it didn't do anywhere near as well as the GBA games. If the third game really didn't do well, then I don't think it matters that it will be as far away from SSB4 as The Lost Age was from Brawl.
Yeah, that's what I THOUGHT you were saying. (As in, making some arbitrary goal post e.g "sells success")
And to that I say ... I'm pretty sure Sakurai just picks what he thinks is relevant and fun when it comes to characters not from the 3 big series. I really think that S&P will be apart of the roster simply because of how open Sakurai was with his Brawl DoJo page about it's AT.