Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Director Seemingly Confirms Bad News About Series' Future

Super Smash Bros. Ulitmate director Masahiro Sakurai has seemingly confirmed some bad news about the series' future. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate support is coming to an end. In fact, at the moment of writing this, it's all but over after a nearly three-year run which included a variety of DLC characters ranging from Sora of Kingdom hearts to Steve from Minecraft. While support of the game is coming to an end though, many still and will continue to play it. Meanwhile, its massive critical and commercial success means a sequel is inevitable, or so we thought. 

During a recent interview, the creative director and creator of the series, the aforementioned Sakurai, seem to confirm that development of a new game isn't currently in development, and from the sounds of it, Sakurai isn't sure if another game in the series is going to be anytime soon, admitting the series has become problematically dependent on his vision and work.

"I've been doing too much of the work myself, so I'd need to resolve that, too. 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," said Sakurai while speaking to The Verge. "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."

Sakurai continued:

"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."

As you can see, Sakurai seems to think the massive roster of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster is going to cause Nintendo problems going forward, as players will expect this base roster of characters to be in every game going forward, which is a balancing and logistical nightmare. In other words, it sounds like this problem is also contributing to the uncertainty over the series' future.