Sakurai: Change of direction may be needed for next Smash Bros.

The last two games from Masahiro Sakurai, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Kid Icarus: Uprising, packed in a ton of content.

Brawl featured a full single-player mode, a number of multiplayer modes/options, an “Event” mode, trophies and stickers to collect, and lots more. Uprising offered a considerable amount as well with its gem crafting, tons of achievements to clear, local and online multiplayer, and AR functionality.

Sakurai’s next game is a brand new Smash Bros. entry for Wii U and 3DS. Although these two titles will likely be crammed with a great deal of things to see and do much like his previous projects, Sakurai doesn’t seem to be concerned about quantity this time around. Instead, he believes “a change of direction may be what’s needed.”

When Nintendo Power asked about the difficulties in making a new Smash Bros. considering the amount of content included in previous games, Sakurai said:

“It isn’t a matter of ‘if the next game has 50 characters, that’ll be enough.’ There is a certain charm to games that have huge casts of playable characters, but they tend to have issues with game balance and it becomes very difficult to fine-tune each character and have them all feel distinctive…. In terms of quantity, we’ve probably already reached the limit of what’s feasible. I think a change of direction may be what’s needed.”

You can read up on Sakurai’s other Smash Bros. comments with Nintendo Power here.