The director of the Super Smash Bros. franchise recently shared his thoughts on the future of Smash.
In a video posted to his gaming commentary YouTube channel, Nintendo‘s Super Smash Bros. series director Masahiro Sakurai discussed how he can’t see the Smash series getting any bigger than Ultimate. In comparing Ultimate to the game’s prior iterations, Sakurai stated that it was “difficult to imagine an increase of this magnitude happening again.” While Sakurai clarified this was by no means an announcement that Smash was ending as a series, but that the latest game did truly feel like the ultimate conclusion. “Every time, we managed to make a game I had previously thought impossible,” said Sakurai, but that “it would be difficult to push it any further than we have.”
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was released in 2018 as the latest series installation for the Nintendo Switch. The game was given higher stakes than its predecessors, as it followed the destruction of every Smash character, with only Kirby surviving. The trailer garnered serious hype from the Smash community, and since then has continued to maintain its fan base with relatively regular updates to add new playable characters. Smash Ultimate has included game icons such as Minecraft‘s Steve, Kingdom Hearts‘ Sora, and the title characters of Banjo-Kazooie.
Nintendo vs the Super Smash Fan Base
That being said, there is still a somewhat tense relationship between Nintendo and the Smash community in particular with the gaming giant’s history of restricting competitive players and tournaments. Nintendo recently tightened the reins on their control over Smash competitions, stating that gaming competitions not officially licensed by Nintendo will have a 200-participant limit for offline events, a $5,000 USD cap on prize money, and rules against sponsors, profiting from the competition and a myriad of other limitations. The new set of rules against unofficial competitive play has the Smash community worried about the future of gaming, especially those who play Super Smash Bros. Melee.
While Masahiro did not outright reject the idea of another Super Smash Bros. game, in addition to whether it can be topped, the series director stated that the game developers were certainly challenged while creating Ultimate. Masahiro discussed the constant buzz around Ultimate‘s updates, with players always speculating on the next characters to come. Given the level of secrecy necessary in making content for the game, and the fact that the developers were working hard remotely through the pandemic, the anxiety surrounding Smash is something they have to consider.
Source: Masahiro Sakurai via YouTube
