It finally happened. Masahiro Sakurai has released the final scheduled video of his YouTube channel. Towards the beginning of the program, Sakurai tells fans to look forward to the special finale episode in the very near future.
Throughout the sequence, Sakurai highlights how the other developers assigned to a project are just as important as the director or producer of said project. “Just because someone’s a director, producer, or some kind of leader, that doesn’t mean it’s their job to bark orders at the rest of the team,” declared Sakurai.
Instead, Sakurai insists that the leader of the project must aim to make requests of the developers with the goal in mind of guiding the title to the finish line. Overall, it seems that Sakurai considers the roles of every type of developer to be equally important.
These statements come across as being very humble for Sakurai as he’s acted as the director or some sort of leader for Kirby’s Dream Land, Kirby’s Adventure, Kirby Super Star, Super Smash Bros., Super Smash Bros. Melee, Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, Kirby Air Ride, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Super Smash Bros. 4, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate throughout his career.
“While they are in a position to ask for things as they guide a title towards the finish line, they’re no higher up than anyone else,” continued Sakurai. “On the contrary, the people who provide ideas and proposals are powerless without others helping them out!”
Sakurai notes that, while it may seem like directors are giving instructions that travel downward towards the rest of the team, the reality is that they’re making requests from the bottom up to the developers that will be doing the actual work.
As such, Sakurai is adamant about the importance of treating every “team member” with politeness and respect. He makes it a point to address them formally, even if they’re young, new hires.
Needless to say, this ends up being quite the subject for Sakurai to end his video series on. Of course, it’s also not surprising to hear just how humble Sakurai is considering he once declared that he would weather any hardship if it resulted in more people playing his games.
This is no empty statement coming from Sakurai as he once worked 13 months straight without a single day off during the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Needless to say, by the end of that development process, he ended up being hospitalized due to overworking himself.
Regardless, the timing of the conclusion of this video series seems rather interesting. Indeed, Sakurai has already declared that he’s still creating games for the time being. With this in mind, it seems likely that Sakurai will be focusing on whatever game he might be creating now that his YouTube channel has been mostly wrapped up.
In the past, there has been a new Super Smash Bros. entry on every mainline Nintendo console. Earlier this year, Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed the existence of the Switch successor.
As it turns out, the Switch successor is slated to be announced before the end of this fiscal year, prior to April 1, 2025. Rumors suggest that the Switch successor effectively acts as a far more powerful upgrade over the Switch.
Meanwhile, Bandai Namco’s Studio 2 & Studio S, the development studios for Super Smash Bros. 4 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, have recently filled positions for an action game played from a “side-view. Considering that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has sold over 34.66 million units worldwide at this point, the idea of Sakurai and Nintendo choosing to work with Bandai Namco once again is one that makes a lot of sense.
Curiously, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was also recently updated to version 13.0.3. Though this patch only had a single patch note detailing a change to how the Global Smash Power ranking system worked, the fact that the game is being updated at all by this stage of the game’s life has huge implications for the future of the series.
Ultimately though, it seems that Sakurai is probably going to go quiet for a while with his YouTube channel project wrapping up. If he really is working on the next entry of the Super Smash Bros. series, then it means that we should hear from him again some day. We’ll just have to wait and see what comes from all of this.