A couple of people have quoted me with Cloud and Joker, but those go entirely with my point.
Cloud himself was never prominent on Nintendo, but Final Fantasy was. No matter how you slice it, he’s the biggest character of Final Fantasy, so it feels natural to include him. I’ve been a Cloud supporter for a LONG time for that very reason.
I’d very much argue the same for Joker. Persona is a spin-off of Shin Megami Tensei, which has PLENTY of Nintendo games. Joker just so happens to be the big character so many people like.
Dante is a great character, and he’s appeared in Project X Zone, but there has never been a Devil May Cry game on a Nintendo console. That is my entire point. Don’t read any further into it lol
And, for the third time, I don’t think that makes Dante less likely. He’s just less desirable to ME PERSONALLY because I would prefer a character I more associate with Nintendo, and Capcom has an actual ton of those.
You still have to go through hurdles to get to that conclusion though.
I mean, it can be done for Dante in two different ways.
1) Dante is own by Capcom, Capcom has supported Nintendo. Also created by Kamiya, who created Bayonetta and Wonderful 101, he's supported Nintendo.
2) DMC was originally Resident Evil 4, RE has appeared on many Nintendo systems.
Still though, Nintendo and Sakurai don't care about any of this. Sakurai only wants fun characters that mean something to video game history. Nintendo wants more money and to bring non-Nintendo/Smash fans to Smash.
Also, Persona has only tangential links to Shin Megami Tensei, they aren't really considered spin-off games in Japan, even if they did spin-off of a spin-off, Shin Megami Tensei if..they only called them Shin Megami Tensei: Persona in the West. It's still a series that hasn't had much history on Nintendo consoles.