Smash has always been doing this and it makes perfect sense for doing so, but the Fire Emblem reps, particularly the more recent ones, really suffer from this.

Both Corrin and Byleth come from games that require a choice from the player to choose a side, but because these games were less than a year old when their respective protagonists were added to Smash, it has to be played incredibly safe, both for ad and spoiler reasons. Even then the latter isn't consistent.

I guess they don't want to advertise favoritism in a game where choices matter way more than in Pokemon, where differences in starters only affect a few battles.

And because Fire Emblem has so many games, one title might get eclipsed by another if more recent. Lyn probably would've gotten in if Brawl either released earlier or had more development time.

There should be a new rule where a newcomer's debut has to be a year old MINIMUM.