Pretty sure we prove that on a regular basis with Sonic.
The Sonic fanbase, as a whole, has seemingly such a low regard for quality now-a-days, I don't think they should even be considered beyond the notion of "sucker".
And to think, they used to call us Mega Man fans "Capcom's suckers".
I can't help but find it ironic that Ben uses an example of a fan's reaction to a character's absence as evidence to why a character's absence to avoid irking the fans is acceptable.
The "irony", if you chose to see it as such, takes a back seat to more of the notion of "how to do things right", or at least, go about from the stand-point of pissing off the least amount of people, as possible. Again, SNK's example is an example of how you [acid burst] people off, when they've come to expect certain things, and then it was taken away. Nintendo's example is more along the lines of "let's not rock the boat, and take the lesser of two evils, as opposing to opening Pandora's box unnecessarily".
That's actually counter-productive to your argument, then. If there's precedent for the float being acceptable as a situational move, then Peach's presence in any game with an aerial power-up should be fine.
I don't necessarily see it as such.
If by the same token, Yoshi's Island (as much as I love it so) is not viewed as a traditional Mario game, but yet, certainly makes a lot of equally compelling things for the green dino as well, then I would wager the same can apply for a number of other games in the series. Yoshi is also not used to the extent that I would have liked for a game like this, but again, it is what it is, and for a game like this, it "works".
So, again, we seem to see eye to eye on this basic issue, but I still see it in a decidedly different context. To me, the very fact that Miyamoto talked about Peach's dress, and then went on to talk about Wario supposedly "having to be able to fart" in the same paragraph, leads me to believe that there was likely a good deal of things to consider than certainly what we know now.