Smash Ultimate was a huge success and we’re curious if Sakurai will helm a sequel. In a recent interview, he talked about the future of the Smash franchise. It is, after all, the biggest official fighting game crossover of all time. Cloud, Mario, Bayonetta, and so many more represent their companies and franchises in heated battles. Even Minecraft is in the game! How could you possibly top where Smash Ultimate has gone under Sakurai in a sequel? It doesn’t even sound possible. This doesn’t confirm or guarantee a sequel by any stretch of the imagination, but Sakurai does talk about what the future hypothetically could include. 

Sakurai was doing a great deal of the work himself in Smash Ultimate, so stepping away instead of immediately working on a sequel was a good idea. Overwork is a very real thing. He knew that this would be a long project, but it finally came to a head and concluded with Sora’s launch. He was the last fighter for the game, like him or not. There won’t be any further characters added to the game.

If there is a Smash Ultimate sequel, Sakurai said there would likely need to be some cutback. It is just such a colossal cast and would require intense work to do it again. To that point, he had this to say. “I think we’ve reached the limit, at least in terms of volume of content and fighters. Basically, if I were to have the opportunity to work on another Super Smash Bros. game, that means we would have to shrink the roster, but we need to think about whether fans would be pleased about that.”

Smash is the vision of Sakurai himself. His heart, soul, and work were put into the game to make it exactly as he saw it. Since it’s unlikely that Sakurai would be coming back, someone else’s vision would have to expand the Smash franchise beyond what Ultimate came to be. In particular, Sakurai did talk about the vision of the game. “Of course, this is the way it is now because we weren’t successful in splitting the vision between multiple people before. This would be a challenge for the future and something that needs to be discussed with Nintendo if there were to be a next installment in the Super Smash Bros. series.”

As of now, there is no plan to make another Smash game. This could be it, forever. It’s not outside the realm of possibility, but it doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like Sakurai was worn out from doing too much of the work and that they would need a few people’s visions to make it come to life. Just relying on one person is not healthy by any stretch. We’d love to see another Smash game, but it doesn’t sound like Sakurai is especially keen on that.