Minecraft's former production director claims discussion to make Steve a part of the Smash Bros. roster started at least five years ago.

The build to the reveal of a brand new Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighter is always a big deal. In fact, on many occasions, the build to the reveal and the speculation surrounding it is often better than the reveal itself. Nintendo has been gradually revealing Ultimate's DLC over the course of the past two years. Sometimes those reveals please Smash fans, sometimes they most definitely do not.

This week marked the most recent reveal, and speculation surrounding it during the hours leading up to the event had gamers convinced Crash Bandicoot was set to join the battle. Today marks the release of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, so cross-promotion on that level would have made a lot of sense.

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It wasn't Crash, however, it was Steve and Alex from Minecraft. An equally, if not more so, business-savvy decision by Nintendo considering the continued popularity of Minecraft. According to Minecraft's former production director Daniel Kaplan, this wasn't a decision either party involved would have made on a whim. Kaplan claims he heard rumblings of talks between Nintendo and Mojang regarding Steve's inclusion on the Smash roster as far back as five years ago.

Kaplan was responding to someone on Twitter who claims to have heard about Steve joining Smash three years ago, remarking on how long the process has taken. "Three is not enough. At least five," Kaplan replied, "that’s when talks started at least. No idea when implementation started." Kaplan no longer works with Minecraft developers Mojang, hence why he might not know anything more about Steve and Alex's journey to Smash.

It's fascinating to get an insight into how long it really takes before a character can be added to the Smash roster. While not every character will have required half a decade of work and discussion, Steve won't have been the only one who needed all of that legwork to make his addition happen. Perhaps when speculating on the next DLC addition, Smash players should consider what was around and popular five years ago. Not a good sign for Fortnite fans hoping Jonesy joins the battle as the BR game only just celebrated its third birthday.

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