Regardless of who is more popular or not, or whose game sold more copies, the decision is not made by popular demand. While companies' focus may be to make money or make a statement, it is clear that these are not priorities for Harada. Ultimately he chooses who goes into his games. Maybe he likes 16 more than 7, or Clive more than Tifa. Maybe it's more appealing to him to make Clive into a fighter than Tifa. Maybe he doesn't want to rehash a character that has already been put into fighting games before. Or maybe he chose someone that would get people talking about Tekken that would spark controversy and keep people on their toes.

Personally, I like both tifa and Clive and have played their games. I would be happy with either choice, or if he went in a completely different direction as well. I simply enjoy these games, including tekken. But I am still on T7 until T8 has finished with its DLC. Until then, there are plenty of other games I still own but have yet to complete to keep me entertained.

Also you can't argue that by every metric 7 beat 16 when you provide a table that shows that all three games won the same number of game awards. That's misleading to only look at nominations.