Super Smash Bros. creator says he’s been working on a new game since 2022

Game designer Masahiro Sakurai’s two-and-a-half-year YouTube journey is now complete. The Super Smash Bros. and Kirby creator uploaded his final video — and his 260th — to his channel Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games. The series finale sends the series off with a look back at its creation. While it’s bittersweet and a little inside-baseball, Sakurai used the send-off to also confirm that he’s been working on a new, unannounced game since 2022.

Some viewers may have thought that Sakurai’s been taking it easy for the past two-plus years, focusing primarily on his YouTube channel. But he says that in addition to pumping out two or three videos about game development each week, he’s also been working full-time on a new game at his company Sora Ltd.

Sakurai said that once he completed his work on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which culminated in the October 2021 release of the game’s final DLC character Sora, he started working on a new game proposal. He noted that work on his next game wouldn’t get underway until April 2022, when he was able to assemble a team of developers. Sakurai used that six-month downtime to prep for his YouTube channel, writing hundreds of scripts and recording video for a pilot.

Over the next couple years, as his videos were translated, animated, edited, and uploaded, Sakurai says he was often working from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. He was managing game development during regular working hours and overseeing videos for his Creating Games channel after hours. Sakurai famously works extremely long hours.

Sakurai didn’t offer any hints about what his next game will be, who’s working on it, or who’s publishing it. “Assuming we’re able to get it made, it should be announced sooner or later,” Sakurai said, unhelpfully.

One project that Sakurai could be working on is the next Super Smash Bros. game for Nintendo Switch 2. He’s discussed working on a follow-up to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the past, acknowledging that it would likely be a sequel of smaller scope.

Sakurai told The Verge in a 2021 interview that he thinks Ultimate has “reached the limit, at least in terms of volume of content and fighters.”

“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,” Sakurai said at the time. He also admitted that he’s been doing too much of the work himself. “The current Super Smash Bros. has too much of my personality poured into it. In order for a long-time series to continue thriving today, we need to think about eliminating the series’ dependence on just one person’s vision.”

Sakurai has also floated the idea of bringing Kid Icarus: Uprising, his 2012 action-adventure game for Nintendo 3DS, to new platforms. In November 2022, Sakurai teased in one of his YouTube videos, “It sure would be nice to play Kid Icarus: Uprising on a home console. I wonder if someone out there will ever port it?”

Whatever Sakurai’s working on, it could be one of his last games. The developer said in his final Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games video that he’s “getting old enough to consider retirement at some point.” Super Smash Bros. Ultimate required about six years of development from initial planning to final DLC, so Sakurai may want to finally rest after completing his next game. Stay tuned, Sakurai says.