Smash Ultimate is not a polished game. It is held together with spit and duct tape, and then just spray painted with clear coat so it looks shiny to distract people who don't look closely.
Rivals 2 has so much care and attention put into it already at THE THIRD BETA. It is ALREADY more polished than smash ultimate IMO.
No smash ultimate is a big game, and it had a big budget, but that budget went to making the game big, not to actual quality.
the reason why smash bros is still popular despite all of these "smash killing platform fighters" is that it's already there
why would you pay for this furry fighting game with weird characters when you could just buy the Nintendo fighter that has all the best characters you already know and love?
why would you play as Spongebob or Shaggy when you're not gonna play this game like a week from now? who cares if it's free, i can just play smash
it's effectively a rich get richer situation. Nintendo could never innovate on smash again and people would still buy the new entries
unfortunate, isn't it?