In a recent interview, the Super Smash Bros. series director, Masahiro Sakurai, has gone on record professing his concerns about the future of the franchise, stressing that he can’t see a way in which the series could ever be bigger than Ultimate. In 2018, Smash Bros. UItimate was released on Nintendo Switch, and it seems that since then, Sakurai has been racking his brain, trying to think about what comes next.
It’s Called Ultimate For a Reason
In the interview that was written up by IGN, Sakurai explained that the next Smash Bros. game might not be able to ‘live up to’ Ultimate, which remains a titan of a title even today, five years after it was released.
He said:
As for what comes next for the Smash Bros. series, even I’m not sure. I feel we truly succeeded in making people happy with this game, but now that Smash Bros. has grown to be monstrous in size, I’d say it’s difficult to imagine an increase of this magnitude happening again. Every time, we managed to make a game that I had previously thought impossible, so I can’t say for certain there won’t be another, but I do think it would be difficult to push it any further than we have.
But seeing that sentiment on paper, it must be asked, does bigger necessarily mean better? This is a franchise that has been around since 1999 and has constantly improved with each new iteration. Everything peaks, sure – but there is plenty left in the tank for Smash Bros., it just needs to be pulled out of there by Bandai Namco.
Do you think we can see something even better than Ultimate emerge in the next few years?
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