Yeah, the shoto thing is pretty irrelevant. I don't know why people are bitching about it.
I honestly don't care, but some people have issue with so many characters with similar appearences and movesets. Except for the appearences part in the case of Sakura and Gouken (and Sagat if you want to count him too).
The game has like over 20 characters so it's probably not all that noteworthy anyway.