Masahiro Sakurai has apparently been working on a secret game project since April 2022. He apparently completed the proposal for this mysterious title back in July 2021 “at lightning speed” while still working on the Kazuya and Sora DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
As expected, Sakurai wasn’t willing to divulge too many more details about what he’s been working on since then, but he did hint that “it should be announced sooner or later.” Regardless, there are plenty of reasons to suspect that this is a game slated for the Nintendo Switch successor.
According to Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, the Switch successor is set to be unveviled before the end of the current fiscal year, meaning that we should get more information sometime between now and March 31, 2025. He also recently revealed that the long-awaited Switch successor will have backwards compatibility with its predecessor, the Nintendo Switch.
The fact that this new game has had more development time than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate until its official unveiling by this point suggests that this mysterious project could be a launch title for the Switch successor. At the very least, it will probably be released early into the new console’s lifespan.
This is pure speculation, but many fans believe that this new project could be the next entry in the Super Smash Bros. series after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It might feel like it’s too soon for the next iteration in the franchise, but it’s actually been nearly six years since Smash Ultimate released worldwide on December 7, 2018.
Since that release window, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has surpassed many milestones including achieving over 35.14 million sales. This marks Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as the third best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch after Animal Crossing: New Horizons (46.45 million units) and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (64.27 million units).
It’s also worth noting that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the best-selling entry in the series overall. Its success alone represents 45.97% of the franchise’s 76.44 million lifetime sales.
Needless to say, the Super Smash Bros. series has become immensely important to Nintendo. Of course, this is somewhat ironic considering that Satoru Iwata was initially denied permission to use recognizable Nintendo characters for the roster of Super Smash Bros., though this wasn’t known to Masahiro Sakurai until later as Iwata told him to proceed with the character implementations anyways.
Regardless, Iwata would later go out of his way to recruit Sakurai to develop an entry for Super Smash Bros. on the Wii after it had already been announced. Iwata had told Sakurai that Super Smash Bros. with Wi-Fi capabilities was the most-wanted title on the Wii for Japanese and American audiences.
Apparently, Iwata even pressured him by stating that, without Sakurai, all that Nintendo could hope to do would be to rerelease Super Smash Bros. Melee with online capabilities. Ultimately, Iwata had went out of his way specifically to get Sakurai on board.
As such, Sakurai is quite aware of just how important the Super Smash Bros. series has become to Nintendo. This importance is probably a good reason as to why there has been a new iteration with every console thus far since the Nintendo 64.
“Smash is one of Nintendo’s premiere titles. Even though Smash doesn’t put out a lot of merchandise besides amiibo, Smash supports a lot of other games, serving a sort of promotional role.” — Masahiro Sakurai
“Smash is one of Nintendo’s premiere titles. Even though Smash doesn’t put out a lot of merchandise besides amiibo, Smash supports a lot of other games, serving a sort of promotional role,” once wrote Sakurai in his Famitsu Column back in 2018 (as translated by Source Gaming. “In addition, since it’s a huge collaborative project, it exerts a large influence on other titles. So there’s always the possibility of another Smash game being released, and it’s possible there might be a Smash someday that I’m not involved in.”
However, Sakurai has also noted that Smash right now is unable to continue without his involvement. Due to how the previous entries were designed, the series has become too dependent on the vision of its creator, which is something that Sakurai may aim to actually eliminate in the future.
Following up after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate might actually seem impossible, but Sakurai believes that it will probably happen someday anyhow. This is likely due to how important the intellectual property has become to Nintendo.
“Smash Bros. is a massive, important title for Nintendo, so it’s fair to assume there will be another one at some point, but it’s going to take some work to figure out exactly how to make that happen,” said Sakurai back in 2023. “For my part, I’d like to keep working with Nintendo however I’m able.”
“Smash Bros. is a massive, important title for Nintendo, so it’s fair to assume there will be another one at some point, but it’s going to take some work to figure out exactly how to make that happen.” — Masahiro Sakurai
It’s really no wonder why Nintendo invests so heavily into the development of titles within the series. Starting with Super Smash Bros. Brawl, each iteration has had over 100 people working it.
With Super Smash Bros. Ultimate breaking records in terms of its sales figures, Nintendo is likely going to want another entry on the Switch successor at some point. Whether or not that’s the project that Sakurai is currently involved in is currently unknown to us. Should it turn out to be something different, Sakurai will probably end up returning to the series after that project is finished with.
Following up after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will no doubt be difficult, but as noted by Sakurai, the series does more for Nintendo than just its sales figures alone. This is a franchise that even manages to promote Nintendo’s other intellectual properties, which is perfect for whenever a new console is released.
It really is just a waiting game at this point. Based on the timeline, we’ll have a pretty good idea about how much longer we’ll have to wait until we’ll be playing the next Smash sequel.