jeffery the skeleton

I think they're avoiding that one and not referencing/mentioning it at all for a reason, haha Would they really reveal him before Mai's out? I'd assume they would want to keep the focus on her, but I'm not quite sure how they handle things like that.

They don't have CSS shoutouts recorded for all 40 voice packs right now, so it's not too likely. If Jubei had that sort of work done for him already he's well on his way. and it's not really comparable to the Kazuma/Hibiki scraps, if it was a remnant of cut content it wouldn't have been after Mai.

These numbers are normal for the series (CP was an outlier). They're also only covering digital and it's a pretty safe bet that most went that route because of the demo thing. It had training/netplay/arcade mode all available weeks in advance. I doubt Jubei would get cancelled either, he seems to be the last planned character that they have cooking. Doubt they would scrap stuff that's currently in development over this. Fans of Kajun/Trinity have more to worry about there.

There's a bunch of system voice packs that replace the announcer (mostly playables but it includes a few that aren't like Gii/Nago/Kajun/etc). Jubei has one of those, which wouldn't say much on its own... but then he has a character select screen call out in all 40 voice packs with the rest of the playables. The character select call outs appear to be in release order, and Jubei is after Mai, so he's likely intended to be DLC for later. Not that he's a lock or anything. You usually do voice recordings in batches, so they might have just included just in case they finally figured out how to get him to work in the game. "Too short" doesn't seem to be an issue anymore with Es around, at least. She's not much taller than he is.