Game designer Masahiro Sakurai’s two-and-a-half-year adventure with YouTube has come to an end. Creator of Super Smash Bros. and Kirby uploaded his final video – and 260th – to his channel Masahiro Sakurai on game development. The series finale sends the series back to its origins. While it’s bittersweet and somewhat baseball-related, Sakurai used the farewell to confirm that he’s been working on a recent, unannounced game as of 2022.
Some viewers may have thought that Sakurai had been peaceful over the past two-plus years, focusing mainly on his YouTube channel. However, he says that in addition to posting two or three game development videos every week, he is also working full-time on a recent game at his company Sora Ltd.
Sakurai said this after finishing work on Super Smash Bros. Ultimateculminating in the October 2021 release of the game’s final DLC character, Sora, began working on a recent game proposal. He noted that work on the next game will not start until April 2022, when he will assemble a team of programmers. Sakurai used this six-month break to prepare his YouTube channel, writing hundreds of scripts and recording videos for the pilot.
Sakurai claims that for the next few years, as his films were translated, animated, edited and uploaded, he often worked from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. He managed game development during regular business hours, and after hours he oversaw videos on his Game Development channel. Sakurai is celebrated for extremely long working hours.
Sakurai hasn’t given any hints about what his next game will be, who is working on it, or who will publish it. “Assuming we can pull it off, it should be announced sooner or later,” Sakurai said uselessly.
One project Sakurai could work on is the next Super Smash Bros. game. on Nintendo Switch 2. He talked about working on a sequel to the game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the past, admitting that it would likely be a smaller-scale sequel.
Sakurai said Edge in a 2021 interview, he believes Final “has reached its limit, at least in terms of amount of content and fighters.”
“If I had the opportunity to work on another Super Smash Bros. game, it would mean we would have to reduce the roster, but we have to think about whether the fans would be happy with that,” Sakurai said at the time. He also admitted that he did too much work himself. “The current Super Smash Bros. it has too much of my personality in it. For a long-running series to thrive today, we need to think about eliminating the show’s dependence on just one person’s vision.
Sakurai also came up with the idea of taking it with her Little Icarus: The Uprisinghis 2012 action-adventure game for Nintendo 3DS, for new platforms. In November 2022, Sakurai teased in one of his YouTube videos, “It sure would be nice to play Little Icarus: The Uprising on your home console. I wonder if anyone will ever move it?”
Whatever Sakurai is working on, this could be one of his last games. In Masahiro Sakurai’s recent video on game development, the developer said that he is “elderly enough to consider retirement at some point.” Super Smash Bros. Ultimate took about six years of development from initial planning to final DLC, so Sakurai may want to finally take a break after finishing his next game. Stay tuned, says Sakurai.
