E ratings have always been important to Disney, especially since Kingdom Hearts is involved with their kid cartoons.
Quite frankly money says a lot when it comes down to it. Either way Nintendo is going to have to pay a price for the copyright, cuz whether or not Nomura likes it, Square Enix and Disney are going to ask for a high price.
Also Smash Bros is the number one tournament fighter, I think anyone including Nomura would want their character in Smash.
Oh yeah, I know there has been plenty of Kingdom Hearts games on Nintendo, in the past. But recently the Kingdom Hearts full collection has been re-released for Xbox and PlayStation, not Nintendo. There has been a lot of newcomers to Kingdom Hearts ever since Kingdom Hearts 3, also not released on switch. Quite frankly Melody of memory is going to run better and look better on a PS4 than the switch. Naturally most people are just going to buy the PS4 version, because they're the same price. So they're only going to get Kingdom Hearts fans that don't have a PS4 to buy it on the switch. Which is going to be a small percentage, because a good majority of the Kingdom Hearts fans have played Kingdom Hearts 3 on the PS4. Quite frankly Kingdom Hearts still makes the most of it's money in Japan, and most of them will have a PS4.
Sure maybe some of the guys on the Xbox don't have a PS4, but that's still not a very big percentage.
Not to mention Nintendo has the drift problem, with their controllers, and I can see that being a really big pain when playing a music rhythm game. Sure you can get that fixed for free now, but unless you have a spare set of controllers you're going to be controllerless until you get your joycon shipped back to you. Not to mention the Nintendo controllers are freakishly expensive still.
So yeah I don't think Melody have memory is going to sell as well on the switch. Which will really look bad for Nintendo, because what's the point in going through the work to make the game work on the switch when it doesn't sell well enough?
And yes they're going to compare it to the PS4, because at the end of the day these games are owned by big companies and big companies look at numbers.
Not to mention you'll have plenty of those guys who are radical PS4 fans that will make a big point of how much more Melody of memory sold on the PS4 versus the switch.
Also it would be a big opportunity miss if Nintendo doesn't get a deal to put Sora and Smash during the release of Melody of memory. Because if they're able to outsell or even match the PS4, then maybe they can get a port of the rest of the games on the switch.
I do respect that Nomura has the final say when it comes down to it. but I'm pretty sure the only things that probably are bothering him are which version of Sora does he put on Smash? If Sora gets in Smash and would it be a good idea to make the other skins other characters? Because Nomura always thinks of his fans and he wants to please them the best he can.
There is one other thing that could keep Nomura from putting Sora in Smash, but I would think this would be very greedy of him. It could be that he would like a deal where he could put Nintendo characters in his game, if his characters are in a Nintendo game. That could be what he actually wants, I mean think of how much more creative he could be with that kind of deal. But it's very unlikely to actually happen.
I only say this because Kingdom Hearts characters have not been in any other games, other than Sora being in the World of Final Fantasy as a summon, but that's an in-house game, so I don't feel like it really counts.
Although Nintendo has has more crossovers lately than they have in the past.
So they could be more open to that kind of deal. But I'd be very surprised if it actually happened.
Again when it comes down to it Nomura has the final say, but I don't see any reason why he wouldn't want to put Sora in Smash, cuz he likes to pleases his fans to the best of his ability and a lot of his fans want Sora in Smash, but the problem is which Sora? This is obviously a decision that Nomura would not want to rush, hence why sora4smash was just annoying. Nobody likes to be rushed.
I think that's more of an issue with fire emblem characters than anything else. As foxychian stated, the keyblade isn't so much a sword as much as it is a wand, though I would make the argument that it is more used as a bludgeon most of the time as opposed to a sword. Perfect examples of this are when Sora swings in KH 1, it focuses more on the blunt tip of the kingdom key rather than squarely focus on the teeth. But the general consensus among gamers describe it the same way that the Evil queen in Snow White described Terras, as a "sword shaped like a key".
Sakurai found a way to make Steve from Minecraft to work. I'm sure he could easily make Sora work. At least he doesn't have to reprogram every single stage.