'Super Smash Bros. Ultimate' Director Reveals Two of the Most Used Fighters

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate stats released by the game's director revealed that despite all the new characters added, players are gravitating most towards two fighters they know from past games.

Masahiro Sakurai, creator of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, published a new Famitsu column wherein he received permission from Nintendo to share some stats pertaining to winrates and playrates for different fighters. The data came from a week of gameplay which covered December 30th to January 5th, and the translation by Nintendo Everything showed what Sakurai had to say about players' opinions and tier lists versus what Nintendo's data showed.

After speaking on one character specifically and addressing some comments about King K. Rool being too strong, comments that were disputed by the data, Sakurai said there was a "big difference" when it comes to the playrates of one character compared to another. Elaborating on that, he revealed that Cloud was the character most played in online matches, but when it comes to the Elite Smash mode where high-skill players do battle, Ganondorf is played the most. That doesn't mean the Legend of Zelda character wins the most though with Sakurai revealing that Ganondorf's Elite Smash winrate is actually lower than most.

"There was also a big difference in terms of character usage – the difference between the minimum and maximum was about 20-fold," Sakurai said. "Overall, the most used character was Cloud, but in terms of Elite Smash it was Ganondorf, whose Elite Smash win-rate was only around 47.9%, which is on the lower end of the rankings."

The fact that people opt for using Cloud or Ganondorf shouldn't be too surprising to Smash Bros. players though seeing how they've both been formidable characters in past games. Cloud was the choice of many pro players in Super Smash Bros. 4 and though Ganondorf hasn't been quite as viable competitively, he hits like a truck and has a devoted group of players.

Both characters were also affected by Nintendo's latest Super Smash Bros. Ultimate update but the changes will only help their playrate and perhaps even their winrate. The update brought about a huge series of buffs and nerfs for different fighters, but both Cloud and Ganondorf only benefitted from it by getting two areas each buffed.