In Masahiro Sakuai’s latest video on his YouTube channel, he highlighted how he entered into the game industry at a young age. Indeed, it’s said that one of Sakurai’s earliest experiences within the game industry began at the age of 19 when he created Kirby and directed Kirby’s Dream Land while working for HAL Laboratory. Sakurai is 53 years old now.
With Sakurai being that young, this obviously meant that he had to work with people that were older than him. As Sakurai has become older, he’s found that many of those people have now seemingly disappeared from the game industry.
Though Sakurai wonders what happened to many of these older game developers, he notes that it’s a common thing for people to switch career paths and find success elsewhere. He’s adamant that these people shouldn’t be written off as being “washed up” or “finished” just because they aren’t in the public eye anymore.
However, it’s what Sakurai said next that was interesting. Near the end of the video, he mentioned that he’s still involved with the game industry as a game creator.
“As for me, I’m still creating games for the time being,” said Sakurai. “But I’m also making this YouTube channel. I’d never done anything like this before starting out, so in a way, you could say I haven’t exactly stayed put either.”
Over a year ago, Masahiro Sakurai stated that he was now semi-retired at the age of 52. Now, it seems that Sakurai might be hinting at the possibility that he’s been working on his next game while also managing his videos.
Upon declaring that he was still creating games for the time being, he showed a brief clip of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in which Captain Falcon, Dark Samus, Mr. Game & Watch, and Byleth were facing off in a free-for-all match.
Sakurai has previously talked about how he believes that the Super Smash Bros. series currently isn’t able to continue on without him. As such, there have been plenty of rumors regarding a Nintendo Switch follow up.
It’s entirely feasible that development of the next Super Smash Bros. entry has already begun. This is supported by the fact that Studio 2/Studio S of Bandai Namco, the same studio responsible for the development of Super Smash Bros. 4 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, had recently posted that they were looking to fill positions with those experienced in action games of the side-view variety.
At some point in January, we do know that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will receive an update of some sort that will add new Spirits to the game. This could be a big deal since the last time a Spirit was added to the game was back in January 2022 with the addition of Evil Ryu to commemorate Street Fighter’s 35th anniversary, though the developers have said before that they were finished with balance adjustments.
Coincidentally, January 2024 will mark the 25th anniversary of the Super Smash Bros. series. Rumor has it that Nintendo is planning to do something to celebrate this occasion. As such, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that Sakurai could be involved.
Regardless, it seems that Sakurai believes himself to still working in the game development industry, and considers his YouTube channel to be a separate thing. We’ll just have to wait and see what comes of this in the future.