Sakurai Won't Rule Out Smash Bros. Sequel, But Succession Remains Uncertain

Masahiro Sakurai, the architect behind Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, has left the door open for a sequel—but only barely, and with considerable ambivalence about what that future might look like.

In an interview with the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, Sakurai was direct about his current state of mind: he isn't actively developing plans for a follow-up to the Nintendo Switch fighter that launched in late 2018. Yet he stopped short of declaring Ultimate the final entry in the series. The tension in his position is revealing. He doesn't want to make another Smash Bros. game himself, and he's tried to hand the reins to someone else. Those attempts haven't succeeded. If the series continues, he said, Nintendo and he will need to sit down and figure out how to make it work—a conversation that hasn't happened yet, or at least not one that's yielded results.

Ultimate itself was a staggering undertaking. What began as rumors of a simple port of the Wii U and 3DS versions evolved into something far more ambitious: a comprehensive archive of every fighter the series had ever produced, plus new additions like Ridley and Simon Belmont. The game shipped with more than 80 playable characters. Over the years since launch, two seasons of DLC expanded the roster further, introducing guest fighters from outside Nintendo's universe—Persona 5's Joker, Kingdom Hearts' Sora, and many others. The game became less a fighting game and more a monument to gaming itself, a place where characters from wildly different franchises could share a stage.

Sakurai's hesitation about a sequel makes practical sense when you consider what Ultimate achieved. He has said publicly that he doesn't believe any future Smash Bros. game could match its scale. The scope is simply too vast. A successor would inevitably live in Ultimate's shadow, forced to either match an impossible standard or chart an entirely new direction. Neither path is comfortable. Matching it would require assembling the same roster of 80-plus fighters, a feat Sakurai himself doubts is feasible. Diverging from it—cutting characters, reimagining the formula—risks alienating a playerbase that has grown accustomed to Ultimate's comprehensiveness.

The real obstacle, though, is Sakurai himself. He has become so integral to the series' identity that he can't envision someone else steering it successfully. He wants to step away. He's tried to step away. But the institutional knowledge, the relationships with other companies needed to secure guest characters, the design philosophy that has defined Smash Bros. for decades—all of it seems to live in his head. Handing that off to another director isn't simply a matter of passing files and documentation. It's a problem without an obvious solution.

For now, Ultimate remains the last word. Whether that's permanent or merely a pause depends on conversations that haven't yet reached any conclusion. If Nintendo does decide to continue the series on a future console—a Switch Pro, or whatever comes next—it will need to solve the Sakurai problem first. And that may prove harder than making the game itself.