User blog comment:Captain Moch/WARNING! NEW CHALLENGERS APPROACHING! 4-8-14/@comment-26124383-20140409005136

I'm gonna do some math with the characters.

So far, we have 29 characters announced.

The characters in Brawl who haven't been announced to return yet are Ganondorf, Falco, Wolf, Jigglypuff, Captain Falcon, Ness, Ice Climbers, G&W, Wario, Meta Knight, Lucas, Ike and R.O.B. (I'm not counting Snake and the other PT Pokemon since they're extremely unlikely) Since all of those characters are fairly likely, adding them in would give us 42 characters. So I'm guessing we'll have four or five more newcomers after that. This isn't accounting for the possibility that Ice Climbers may not work and that Ike might be replaced by Chrom, but I think having four or five more newcomers would make most sense, since we already have 6 announced, and that would make 10/11 newcomers, which is a similar number to Brawl. This also isn't accounting for Mewtwo, but I also find him kind of unlikely with four Pokemon characters already.

My guesses for the final few are Palutena (all but confirmed), Mii (also all but confirmed), Pac-Man, Chrom (if he's in, he'll probably replace Ike to save room), Shulk, and maybe a couple of bombshells (King K Rool's chances are slightly bigger because Kremlings are enemies in Smash Run, and Ridley still has an ultra-tiny chance).

Overall, I expect a cast of around 45 characters. I would think of possible more, but the 3DS version is gonna be stuffed as it is. Since Brawl's overall roster took up 1.6 GB, one with 10 more characters will probably take up around 2.2 GB, and that leaves only 6.8 GB for stages, modes, Streetpass etc on the cartridge.