Category: Entertainment & Lifestyle

Many players actively grind in Street Fighter 6’s online ranked mode in hopes of reaching the sought after Legend rank. While a player’s personal goal often focuses mainly on getting a higher Master Rate, those who make it into the top 500 for MR are awarded Legend status and are then immortalized on the leaderboard if they maintain it through the end of the latest MR phase.

Throughout every phase, placements and rankings are constantly changing both for players and for specific characters. AlietteFaye, who specializes in creating infographics for various fighting game data and statistics, recently released a new animated graph that details the character representation for Legend ranks in Street Fighter 6 since its launch last year.

Street Fighter 6 first dropped back in June 2023, and though we’re all very used to the current MR system now, it didn’t exist right out of the gate. Capcom would go on to later add Master Rate points, then Legend rank, however, AlietteFaye’s new graph charts that pre-season before MR was added all the way up to what seems to be now with Terry on the playable roster.

This animated bar graph charts every character that was playable during each phase and shows what portion of the top 500 on the leaderboards was occupied by every character. In the early days of the game, the big three for Season 1 — JP, Ken, and Luke — sat comfortably in the top three for representation with JP being at the very top closely followed by Ken.

When MR was eventually implemented, things settled in that first phase with Luke at the top of the heap and JP just barely behind him in second place. Ken would take third here for most used in the top 500 at the time, followed by other powerful fighters in Dee Jay and Cammy.

Fast forwarding to the most recently concluded MR phase, we see that things have shifted quite a bit — and not only due to several DLC characters being added to the game.

As far as the character most highly represented in Legend rank for this past phase goes, Cammy leads by a solid margin. Below her we see JP rising back to prominence after being hit hard with nerfs, then given a handful of buffs to even him back out.

Some of the latest DLC fighters in Akuma and M. Bison sit at third and fourth, respectively, which should come as no surprise as they’re both very strong and used frequently by competitive-level players.

And finally, we see Ken at fifth and DLC character Ed as the sixth most represented. Ken has remained strong throughout the several balance patches we’ve seen added to the game over the last year, and though Ed started out as not being all that great, time and discovery evolved this fighter into one of the strongest characters in the entire game right now.

You can check out the full, animated graph below to see how things have moved and changed over this first year of Street Fighter 6.

Visualization of the Legend Rank character representation over the first 4 MR Seasons (1 year) for Street Fighter 6. I also included the top 500 characters from the pre-season before they implemented MR.#SF6 #StreetFighter6 #スト6 pic.twitter.com/vtdtWRUg1j

— AlietteFaye | Day -232 A.K.I. Main (@AlietteFaye) November 2, 2024

Sony is holding a huge video game sale via the PlayStation Store here in November as thousands of items are currently marked down until the sale ends on November 23.

Amid these deals are, of course, some fighting game titles. While big time price reductions are usually applied only to older content, that’s not at all the case as Mortal Kombat 1’s latest DLC update, Khaos Reigns, has been slashed.

The Khaos Reigns expansion rolled out in part back in late September with three new DLC characters (Sektor, Cyrax, and Noob Saibot) along with a new story mode campaign, Animality finishers for the cast, and the promise of three more DLC characters in time: Ghostface, Conan the Barbarian, and Terminator 2’s T-1000.

Responses to the new contet have been mixed, however, and after a year now of notable struggle with fans since Mortal Kombat 1’s original launch back in September of 2023, NetherRealm Studios seems to be willing to already bring down the price on the not fully rolled out Khaos Reigns.

Tekken 8 dropped back in January of this year and has gone on sale since, but never to the tune of the 50% off that PlayStation is now offering. Players can purchase the standard game for $34.99 right now, or splurge for the Ultimate Edition for $65.99 (40% savings off standard $109.99 price tag).

In addition to these two titles, Street Fighter 6, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and a few other older titles are also available on the cheap right now. We’ve listed a bunch of relevant fighting game deals from the November sale below for you to peruse.

Please note these prices are for the stores in the Unites States, and availability may differ in other regions.

• Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Expansion – $32.49

• Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Kollection – $58.49

• Mortal Kombat X – $4.99

• Mortal Kombat 11 Kombat Pack – $5.99

• Mortal Kombat 11 Kombat Pack 2 – $4.49

• Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath Expansion – $3.99

• Tekken 8 – $34.99

• Tekken 8 Ultimate Edition – $65.99

• Street Fighter 6 Deluxe Edition – $42.99

• Street Fighter 6 – Year 1 Ultimate Pass – $32.49

• Street Fighter 6 – Year 1 Character Pass – $19.49

• Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 – $7.49

• Dead or Alive 6 – $11.99

• Dead or Alive 6 Season Pass 4 – $35.99

• Dead or Alive 6 Character: Tamaki – $3.99

• Dragon Ball FighterZ – $9.59

• Dragon Ball FighterZ FighterZ Pass – $10.49

• Dragon Ball FighterZ Characters: Android 21, Broly, Cooler, Base Goku, Janemba, Kefla – $2.49 each

• Dragon Ball FighterZ Character: SSGSS Goku and SSGSS Vegeta Unlock – $0.98

• Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown Main game & DLC Pack – $7.49

• Virtua Fighter 5 Yakuza Series Collaboration Pack – $2.99

• Samurai Shodown – $8.99

• Samurai Shodown Deluxe Edition – $11.99

• Samurai Shodown Season 1 Pass – $4.99

• Samurai Shodown Season 2 Pass – $3.49

• Samurai Shodown Season 3 Pass – $4.99

• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 – $14.99

• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 – Season Pass – $9.99

• JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R – $9.99

• JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R Season Pass – $9.99

• JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R Season Pass 2 – $10.49

We have seen a lot of great cosplay artists over the years, and most times we see them we get to enjoy the high quality photos they release to their fans. Every now and then, however, we get video of these awesome depictions of some of our favorite characters in action, and even rarer still are videos that do a little something extra on top.

A handful of cosplayers recently met up and participated in a couple of really cool Street Fighter 6-themed skits that essentially recreate some of the aspects of the game in real life. Among these artists we see a beautiful tattooed Cammy, a powerful hooded Bison, and more as they perform various attacks and actions in very stylish manner.

Before we get into the “what” here, let’s discuss the “who.” The participants include cosplayers Jragon Age (Cammy), JoAfterWork (M. Bison), drgerro (Jamie), and MikeyBlaze (Ryu) as the performers in these short, but sweet skits, with camera work and direction being handled by KamenRamenStudios.

In the first skit, we see the lovely Jragon Age rocking Street Fighter 6 Cammy’s outfit 2 as she squares up against drgerro’s top notch Jamie. Cammy crouches down before lunging forward with a series of flying kicks that you’d see out of her actual level 2 super in-game, leaving Jamie stunned and vulnerable to the coup de grace.

Cammy looks back at her foe before unleashing the final kick to close out the round, then strikes her trademark pose.

What makes these skits even cooler is that they have some slick editing both in their pacing and with some effects added in that really bring everything together. In the next one, we see Cammy again, but this time she is at the mercy of the mighty M. Bison.

We see the former dictator clutch Cammy with a Psycho-powered choke hold before Ryu steps in and delivers a powerful right hook to the face of the villain.

These awesome cosplay skits are a fun, quick watch, and you can check them out below.

Time to meet your maker pic.twitter.com/kzuJQO5Zrm

— 𝕵𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖔𝖓 Age (@jragonxx) November 4, 2024

You should consider it an honor to have fallen by my hand twice pic.twitter.com/IRXoAQx4b6

— JoAfterWork (@JoAfterWork) November 5, 2024

The ability to clip and record footage while you play has become an integrally important part of the gaming experience in recent years, and in an effort to keep up with the Joneses (Twitch), Steam has rolled out a new update aimed at making it easy for its users to capture their favorite moments.

The update is called Steam Game Recording and is already available to the public to download. This built-in background system will allow Steam fighting game players (and everyone else) all new freedoms when it comes to capturing and sharing gameplay footage. Continue on to see the patch notes and find out exactly what’s being offered.

Steam Game Recording will allow players to save footage and clips that can be watched, edited, shared, or exported at a later time; record either manually or automatically; toggle settings for quality and length of time of your recordings; quickly zip back to watch quick replays; convert footage to MP4 format; and more.

Though many people do have Nvidia capture cards that offer similar features via the GeForce Experience, native support is always a good thing to have around as well.

What’s more, SGR is not relegated to Steam games only as you’ll have the option to capture non-Steam titles as long as they allow the Steam overlay to run.

General

• Updated embedded Chromium build in Steam to 126.0.6478.183.

• Fixed issue where drag-and-drop of text into a chat would send the text immediately instead of dropping it into the edit area.

• Re-enabled remote install from Steam client via the streaming dropdown.

• Improved detection of other computers for streaming and peer downloading when using a secondary wireless interface.

• Fixed progress bar not updating during game update and move operations involving large files.

• Fixed overlay hanging in some games on macOS and Linux after a game restarts itself.

• Fixed the names of manually added or removed games not appearing in the collection filter header if the game had been removed from the user’s library.

• Fixed steamwebhelper deleting temp directories that it may not have previously created.

• Fixed a bug that could prevent Offline Mode login on the first restart after installing an update.

Remote Play

• Added support for AV1 video streaming on high end systems.

• Fixed the cursor being too small when streaming from a PC with desktop scaling enabled.

• Fixed using software encoding instead of hardware H.264 when HEVC is enabled and unavailable.

• Fixed black screen when streaming HEVC from Steam Deck.

Steam Overlay

• Fixed crash in some games using D3D9.

Steam Input

• Fixed crash occurring when querying community controller configurations in the configurator.

• Added support for wired XBox controllers on macOS Sequoia.

• Fixed the “Turn off Controller” action causing Steam to launch BPM if the main window was focused.

• Increased maximum sensitivity of Joystick Mouse mode.

• Mode Shifts now support D-Pad directions and Right Joystick.

• Mode Shifts now support Track Pad Touch on DualSense/Edge, DualShock, SteamController and SteamDeck.

• SIAPI Glyphs for Playstation Dualsense are now monochrome to match Icons in Big Picture Mode.

• Fixed an issue where bindings that were present from converting a configuration from one controller type to another could be active but not removable due to being filtered out of the binding interface.

• Always show the controller tab in app properties for non-Steam shortcuts.

• Added Invert X and Invert Y to Mouse Regions.

• Scroll Wheel mode can now be chosen from the dropdown in SIAPI games (Inside of Edit Loadout, not Quick Settings).

• Fixed an issue where using a Steam/QAM button chord in a non-Steam game could leave the desktop config loaded instead of the game’s config.

Linux

• Fixed some miscellaneous common crashes.

• Fixed slow startup on systems where the reverse hostname lookup for the loopback interface is not localhost.

• Detecting and passing commands to an already running Steam client is significantly faster.

• Added a -disable-screensaver-inhibit command line option to prevent Steam from inhibiting the screen saver when activity is detected.

• Fixed Linux crash launching steamwebhelper occurring with some system configurations.

• Steam developers can now select which Steam for Linux runtime to use for native titles. Please consult the partner site for more details.

• Native titles will execute in ‘Steam for Linux runtime 1.0 (scout)’ by default, instead of the legacy runtime environment.

• This behavior is consistent with Steam Deck and promotes better compatibility across all Linux desktop distributions.

• Note that this new feature can be turned off globally with “-compat-force-slr off” on the Steam client command line.

• Always allow the Steam client to fallback to X11 when SDL_VIDEODRIVER/SDL_VIDERO_DRIVER is set to wayland.

• Removed the UI toggle to disable Steam Play globally, correctly reflecting that Steam Play is always enabled on Linux. Steam Play was always partially active even when set to off in the UI as it is a requirement for Steam client operation.

• Fixed a case where the wrong DPI scaling factor would be used for systems using a non-gnome based session with an active gnome-desktop-portal service.

• Extended recent Steam Play fixes to third party compatibility tools.

Discovery Queue

• Fixed the Discovery Queue presentation so that the elements around the videos show correctly.

• Improved the animation when scrolling through the discovery queue.

Big Picture Mode

• Fixed keyboard input dialog in-game failing to close/re-open properly if Steam Overlay is toggled while visible.

• Fixed multi-line mode support in the dialog shown by the ShowGamepadTextInput API call in Steamworks.

• Fixed the on-screen keyboard not immediately popping up when games invoke the text entry dialog.

• Fixed a case where the text entry dialog could lose focus and require moving focus to the buttons and back to the text entry.

We found out on Wednesday that Raven was headed to MultiVersus and the developers at Player First Games have made good on their promise to release her early Thursday morning.

Raven is a mage type fighter (surprised?) who can blast foes with dark spells, summon a raven to help out on the battle field, and plenty more. Continue on to see it all.

Raven maneuvers about the screen by gliding and floating about as she appears to use some of her demonic power to manipulate movement. She may not be the fastest character on the MV roster, but she looks incredibly graceful as she flows through combos while talking smack in her trademark style.

Raven, also known as Rachel Roth, has always seethed with personality, and that crucial part of her personality looks to be ported over perfectly into MultiVersus. She has more than a few one-liners in the relatively brief trailer showcase, and we’re sure tons more await us once we get to actually play her.

We also briefly get to see two alternate costumes in the form of a goth school girl and a bright white mage, both of which you can see stills of in the gallery below. Give the trailer a watch and share your reactions to the newest MultiVersus character in the comments.

Season 4 itself for MultiVersus looks like it’s set to release on November 12 and run through January 21, 2025.

Guilty Gear Strive just dropped its massive Season 4 update a week ago that brought in a swath of balance and character changes alongside Queen Dizzy, but it seems the transition hasn’t been very smooth for neither players or the developers.

Arc System Works is apparently well aware of player concerns and issues introduced in Guilty Gear’s big patch.

Strive Producer Ken Miyauchi recently took to social media to release a statement to fans about what the studio is doing after receiving a lot of feedback.

Dear GGST players, I’m seeing many of your concerns on the recent patch 1.40 regarding the latest battle balance update,” wrote Miyauchi. “Internally, I’ve been talking to the teams about it and discuss what we can do and how soon that can be released. I will keep you posted here.”

This came around the same time ArcSys updated their list of known issues from the Season 4 patch with a bunch of new entries.

Dear GGST players,
I’m seeing many of your concerns on the recent patch 1.40 regarding the latest battle balance update. Internally, I’ve been talking to the teams about it and discuss what we can do and how soon that can be released. I will keep you posted here.

— Ken Miyauchi (@KenM_ASW) November 6, 2024

They already list a new game update is planned for sometime in November for the initial discoveries, however, the rest will be “fixed in a future update” — so it’s not known at the moment if they’ll be part of this month’s patch or not.

The mention of player “concerns” is also interesting because it could mean the developers are also looking back over the balance changes in general besides the glitches.

Click images for larger versions

Strive’s Season 4 update has been fairly divisive among the community for how some characters were handled and reworked, especially Ramlethal and Potemkin.

Ramlethal almost functions like a different character than the past three years, and some are under the impression she may be better than ever (along with multiple bugs attached to her specifically).

Previous Evo champion TSM|Leffen shared his displeasure for the direction of the balance update, and while he appreciates the communication, the multi-game pro also asked the Producer to address Strive’s “balance issues” before the Arc World Tour Finals, which are set to take place next March.

Thanks for the communication! Personally, due to the balancing issues with the patch even outside of the bugs, it would be very appreciated if we could have a patch as soon as possible, even if small, before AWT Finals. I understand this is asking a lot, but thought id give my…

— TSM Leffen (@TSM_Leffen) November 6, 2024

It is fairly out of the ordinary for fighting games to drop a major overhaul to the gameplay in the middle of a competitive circuit, but the developers likely wanted to get the new game version out with Dizzy instead of waiting an additional five months for the tour to be done.

You can check out the full list of confirmed issues currently in Guilty Gear Strive in the gallery above, and stay tuned for more updates as they become available.

In-game Issues:
We’ve updated the list of currently confirmed issues occurring in Guilty Gear -Strive- Ver.1.40.
These issues will be fixed in a future update.
We apologize for the trouble caused to all players.

▼[Ver.1.40] Known Issues (Updated November 6, 2024)…

— GUILTY GEAR OFFICIAL (@GUILTYGEAR_PR) November 6, 2024

Stephanie Nadolny previously missed out on Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero and Fighterz too

Dragon Ball Z is probably the most nostalgic anime in the West for people who grew up in the ’90s and 2000’s with each region featuring its own iconic voice cast, and English speakers are about to get back one of the most recognizable actors that we haven’t heard from in a while.

The Dragon Ball Daima anime is set to debut its English dub via a special theatrical release starting this weekend, and one beloved actor is returning for a leading role for the first time in 15 years.

While Sean Schemmel is back to voice Goku along with most of the rest of the regular Funimation cast, we won’t be hearing him as Saiyan hero from Earth most of the time.

Instead, Stephanie Nadolny is back in the booth voicing Goku (Mini) in Dragon Ball Daima’s English dub.

Nadolny is of course most famous for portraying young / teen Gohan in Dragon Ball Z as well as kid Goku in the original Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT with her very distinct sound.

She also carried on those roles across a number of early Dragon Ball Z games in the West, but we haven’t heard from her in a long time.

The last time Nadolny was credited in the series came back around 2009 or 2010 with Dragon Ball: Raging Blast and Dragon Ball: Origins 2.

Every since Dragon Ball Z Kai, Colleen Clinkenbeard had effectively taken over those roles of young Goku and Gohan.

And that includes Dragon Ball FighterZ and Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero too.

So it’s interesting to see Nadolny return in Daima after missing out on the fanservice-filled Sparking Zero.

But many dub fans appear to be happy that she’s back in action again.

“It’s a tremendous honor to once again lend my voice to Goku, and this new chapter, Dragon Ball Daima, is filled with exciting adventures that fans of all ages will enjoy,” she said after the announcement.

Daima takes place after the Majin Buu Saga of DBZ with the new king of the Demon Realm wishing for all of the Z Fighters who fought Buu to turn into kids as to not pose a threat to him.

The series is putting more of a focus on the adventure to turn everyone back on top of the fights you expect from Dragon Ball.

Its first four episodes have also dropped some interesting new lore regarding the Namekians, the Demon Realm and fusion, so it’s not just about trying to make the world of Dragon Ball more kid-friendly again.

This release of the new anime comes during a somber year for Dragon Ball since series creator Akira Toriyama passed away as well as the iconic English narrator for Dragon Ball Z more recently.

The English dub premiere will come to select theaters in North America from November 10–12 with tickets on sale through Fathom Events.

Following dub episodes will presumably launch on Crunchyroll and potentially Hulu afterwards though that information doesn’t appear to be revealed yet.

You can hear Nadolny as Goku again along with the rest of the English cast for Dragon Ball Daima in the trailer below.

Mario Kart 8 may not reach Wii Sports but it’s going to come close

Although the successor for the Nintendo Switch is apparently on the horizon, games for Nintendo’s seven-year-old hybrid console are still selling like crazy.

Nintendo just recently updated their quarterly financial details and video game sales, which reveals Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has officially crossed another huge milestone while a different Switch game is in the running for the best-selling the company has ever put out.

Just ahead of its sixth anniversary, Smash Ultimate has now reached a whopping 35.14 million copies sold worldwide as of September 30, 2024.

That puts the landmark platform fighter as selling an additional almost 500,000 units over the past quarter for a game that hasn’t received a major update or DLC release in years — though there was a small patch just last month.

And compared to a year ago, Smash has pushed almost 3.5 million copies into the hands of players who somehow didn’t already have it.

Smash already broke the record for best-selling fighting game ever five years ago when it toppled Street Fighter 2’s combined 15 million copies that stood for decades.

For its closest competition this past generation, Mortal Kombat 11 did hit 15 million in 2022 and Tekken 7 crossed 11 million — so even those added together with Street Fighter 5’s 7.6 million don’t quite match Ultimate.

With the Switch itself now reaching 146 million systems, that gives Smash Ultimate an impressive attachment rate of just under 25%, which is pretty wild for a fighter on that scale.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U did have a ridiculous 40% attachment rate for the last system, but the Switch has also outsold it now more than 10 times over.

That level of success and some other potential indicators point towards something like a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Deluxe being a strong possibility for the Switch’s successor though obviously nothing is confirmed on that front yet.

And even if Smash Deluxe isn’t being made, at least we know now that Ultimate will be playable on the Switch 2 through backwards compatibility that was just confirmed.

Series creator Masahiro Sakurai recently revealed that he is already working on his new game project, but the way he’s talked about it so far makes it sound like it may not be connected to Smash.

And speaking of deluxe, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has also reached an astounding 64.27 million copies by the end of the last quarter.

For comparisons, the original Super Mario Bros. has sold somewhere in the ballpark of 58 to 65.9 million copies depending on how you want to count the various different versions / bundles.

Mario also got a major boost from coming bundled with the NES too.

On a similar note, Wii Sports is still technically Nintendo’s best-selling game ever at 82.9 million copies, but a majority of them came bundled with the Wii too.

If we combine the sales of MK8D with the original on Wii U, that gives a total of 72.73, so that puts it almost within 10 million of the game that almost no one bought by itself.

We do have to point out, however, that the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe plus Nintendo Switch bundle has been one of the most popular ways to get the system for over six years now — so it’s likely received millions of additional copies for that reason too.

With Nintendo set to reveal their new console sometime this fiscal year, MK8 may not ever quite manage to surpass Wii Sports, especially if a new Mario Kart is coming alongside the system too, but it’s crazy the game has made it this far.

So what have we learned from all this? Packaging games with your consoles is a great way to get a ton of sales if you’re Nintendo.

MultiVersus is about to reach its six-month anniversary after launching, and it looks like they’re gearing up to show something special for DC and cartoon Network fans.

Player First Games is currently running a unique “choose your own adventure” game to apparently tease the Season 4 character announcements though we may already know who they are.

From the start of the game, fans had their suspicions, but between the bat and magic iconography, metal record and the Azarath Metrion Zinthos chant when playing it backwards is giving some very clear indicators as to their identities.

Story is developing…

The sound of thunder fills the sky, ringing in your ears. Rain engulfs you as you jump into a dimly lit room to seek cover. You can see the storm continue to rage through a single, lone window. With every flash of lightning you can see inside the room. What do you do?… pic.twitter.com/Omrk74zZwL

— MultiVersus (@multiversus) November 6, 2024

You remember the book of matches in your back pocket. You strike a match, but it goes out. You strike the last match and light one of three candles in front of you. In its dim flickering light, a record player appears in front of you. The rain seems to stop making sound, but… pic.twitter.com/dL3vZQKJaO

— MultiVersus (@multiversus) November 6, 2024

The record spins to life, echoing the notes of heavy metal. The second candle sparks and lights itself. Reverberation from the music shakes the room to life. Your bones rattle. You feel energized, yet a sense of unease overwhelms you. What do you do? #MultiVersus pic.twitter.com/TVyY9HoFWC

— MultiVersus (@multiversus) November 6, 2024

You have a dark thought. The feeling takes you over. You instinctually put your finger on the record and begin to spin the record backwards. The third candle lights itself with a sudden POP! To your surprise, you can hear a sinister voice as you spin the vinyl backwards. What do… pic.twitter.com/4r2eidvaJP

— MultiVersus (@multiversus) November 6, 2024

During the “special finale episode” of Masahiro Sakurai’s YouTube channel, it was casually revealed that Sakurai had been involved in the development of a secret game project since April 2022. He apparently whipped up the proposal for this game back in July 2021 during the development of Kazuya Mishima and Sora DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

“It was around July 2021. I was busy working on the DLC of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate,” suddenly stated Sakurai on the subject. “To be precise, I was putting together the video for ‘Mr. Sakurai Presents Kazuya.’ Sora was in development too, of course. While I was busy working on those tasks, I received a request to write a game proposal, which I finished at lightning speed.”

Of course, Sakurai had already previously alluded to the fact that he was still involved in the game industry in this capacity as he had stated at one point that he was still creating games for the time being. This was particularly interesting at the time as he had also stated outright that he was semi-retired as of December 2022, but perhaps he was just hinting at how he actually had some free time until the start of his next project.

“While I was busy working on those tasks, I received a request to write a game proposal, which I finished at lightning speed.” — Masahiro Sakurai

Regardless, Sakurai obviously wasn’t willing to divulge too many more details about this upcoming title. However, he did seem to suggest that it could get announced soon.

“I’m sorry I can’t share more about this project, but assuming we’re able to get it made, it should be announced sooner or later,” continued Sakurai.

During his free time, Sakurai made the bold decision to do much of the work necessary to start up his YouTube channel, which was primarily focused on imparting his wisdom and experiences regarding game creation.

According to Sakurai, the target timeframe of the team’s assembly was set to April 2022. Based on how the rest of the video goes, it sounds like work on this game did indeed begin in April 2022.

“I’m sorry I can’t share more about this project, but assuming we’re able to get it made, it should be announced sooner or later.” — Masahiro Sakurai

With all of this in mind, this means that Masahiro Sakurai’s mysterious game project has now been in production for a period of time longer than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate started its development until the reveal of its very first trailer.

This trailer was intentionally cryptic about what it was exactly, leaving many to speculate on whether it would be a port of Super Smash Bros. 4 or not on the Switch. Still, it did reveal Splatoon’s Inkling as a new playable character.

If we assume the team was assembled for this upcoming title around April 30, 2022, then it’s been at least 921 days since then. As for Smash Ultimate, we know that its cycle started in February 2016 (though the proposal was completed back in December 2015).

With the assumption that work on Smash Ultimate theoretically began on February 1, 2016, then it means that it took the developers at most 766 days to release the first trailer that told fans that “Super Smash Bros. is coming to the Nintendo Switch” on March 8, 2018.

It’s also worth noting that the time between Smash Ultimate beginning production and its release date on December 7, 2018 took around 1,040 days. We’re fast approaching that timeline for this new game, and yet there still hasn’t even been a trailer for it.

What’s going on here? More than likely, Sakurai has been tasked with overseeing the development of a new game for the Nintendo Switch successor, which is set to be officially revealed prior to the end of Nintendo’s fiscal year on March 31, 2025. This suggests that Sakurai’s new game could be a launch title for the new console.

Of course, fans immediately began speculating that this new project could be related to the Super Smash Bros. series. This would make sense considering how Smash Ultimate recently crossed the 35 million milestone, so Nintendo would obviously have a vested interest in having the next Smash entry announced early for the new console.

Though Nintendo confirmed backwards compatibility for the Switch successor just yesterday, the Super Smash Bros. series has proven capable of being a console seller on its own. The company will likely want to continue the tradition of producing a new Smash entry for every mainline console since the franchise’s debut on the Nintendo 64.

With news now officially surfacing about the Switch successor from Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, it shouldn’t be too long now before that announcement finally drops (though it’ll likely be in early 2025 at this point). However, considering the amount of time this new game project has been in development, it should be a fairly brief wait between its unveiling and its actual release considering how long Smash Ultimate was worked on.