Remember when Satoru Iwata was talking all excitedly about Nintendo's exciting franchises and how excited he was about how they were all coming to the Wii U and 3DS and stuff? Right, so he may have been a little too excited, it seems, as he actually announced at least one game that doesn't even exist yet.

That game would be the next in the Super Smash Bros. series, which Iwata proudly proclaimed would be coming to both the Wii U and 3DS. Series creator Masahiro Sakurai doesn't dispute that notion, but he would like you to know that he hasn't even started thinking about that game yet.

It's worth noting that Iwata has done this in the past--and it was with Smash Bros., too!

Sakurai apparently opted to use his regular column in Weekly Famitsu (translated by 1UP) to dispel the notion that a new Smash Bros. game was far enough along in development to even be considered a thing yet. Sakurai's studio, Project Sora, is solely focused on Kid Icarus: Uprising at this point in time, and hasn't even begun work on Smash Bros. yet.

"We've got no plans whatsoever -- we've got two new games out in the open when there's no extra time to work with them at all. It makes me cringe, and I'm not sure it's the smartest thing to make gamers wait for several years, but the early announcement was made chiefly in order to attract new team members."

Several years is probably not the phrase you wanted to hear when asking how far off the next Smash Bros. game was, but it's not like Nintendo releases a gaggle of these things every year, anyway. On the plus side, Sakurai had plenty to say on the decision to make the (eventual) game for both the Wii U and 3DS, instead of just one or the other.

"If we went solely for the Wii U," he said, "the HD graphics would really bump up the visual effects, but then we'd be stuck in another arms race. If we made this game another extension over previous one, we'd have to cut out the new things we could possibly do on the 3DS hardware and compete with ourselves again over the size of the character roster and the amount of gameplay we can put it. It wouldn't be a fruitful competition, but doing something completely new would be difficult for many reasons, not least of which that the gamers may not be satisfied with it. That's why we decided to think about ways to link the personal connection one has with his portable system to the gather-around-and-play aspect of console systems."

So, at the very least, Sakurai has clearly been putting some thought into this next Smash Bros. project. Still, the man sounds a tad harried and a little uncomfortable with the strains now placed upon his head and the heads of his team.

"The hardest part about game development is the burdens it places upon me," he said. "With previous projects I had a game design document in place before forming a team, but with this I don't have the time for that. I won't be able to look at every aspect of the game and balance out all the characters by myself this time. I'm trying to think about how this is going to work out, but probably I'll have to discuss it with my future development team. The future of this project really depends on the people I can get involved with it."

Here's hoping he can find himself a future development team capable of taking some of the load off his shoulders. And, also, possibly squeeze in a vacation sometime.

Remember when Satoru Iwata was talking all excitedly about Nintendo's exciting franchises and how excited he was about how they were all coming to the Wii U and 3DS and stuff? Right, so he may have been a little too excited, it seems, as he actually announced at least one game that doesn't even exist yet.

That game would be the next in the Super Smash Bros. series, which Iwata proudly proclaimed would be coming to both the Wii U and 3DS. Series creator Masahiro Sakurai doesn't dispute that notion, but he would like you to know that he hasn't even started thinking about that game yet.

It's worth noting that Iwata has done this in the past--and it was with Smash Bros., too!

Sakurai apparently opted to use his regular column in Weekly Famitsu (translated by 1UP) to dispel the notion that a new Smash Bros. game was far enough along in development to even be considered a thing yet. Sakurai's studio, Project Sora, is solely focused on Kid Icarus: Uprising at this point in time, and hasn't even begun work on Smash Bros. yet.

"We've got no plans whatsoever -- we've got two new games out in the open when there's no extra time to work with them at all. It makes me cringe, and I'm not sure it's the smartest thing to make gamers wait for several years, but the early announcement was made chiefly in order to attract new team members."

Several years is probably not the phrase you wanted to hear when asking how far off the next Smash Bros. game was, but it's not like Nintendo releases a gaggle of these things every year, anyway. On the plus side, Sakurai had plenty to say on the decision to make the (eventual) game for both the Wii U and 3DS, instead of just one or the other.

"If we went solely for the Wii U," he said, "the HD graphics would really bump up the visual effects, but then we'd be stuck in another arms race. If we made this game another extension over previous one, we'd have to cut out the new things we could possibly do on the 3DS hardware and compete with ourselves again over the size of the character roster and the amount of gameplay we can put it. It wouldn't be a fruitful competition, but doing something completely new would be difficult for many reasons, not least of which that the gamers may not be satisfied with it. That's why we decided to think about ways to link the personal connection one has with his portable system to the gather-around-and-play aspect of console systems."

So, at the very least, Sakurai has clearly been putting some thought into this next Smash Bros. project. Still, the man sounds a tad harried and a little uncomfortable with the strains now placed upon his head and the heads of his team.

"The hardest part about game development is the burdens it places upon me," he said. "With previous projects I had a game design document in place before forming a team, but with this I don't have the time for that. I won't be able to look at every aspect of the game and balance out all the characters by myself this time. I'm trying to think about how this is going to work out, but probably I'll have to discuss it with my future development team. The future of this project really depends on the people I can get involved with it."

Here's hoping he can find himself a future development team capable of taking some of the load off his shoulders. And, also, possibly squeeze in a vacation sometime.

well

But it IS coming...so there really was nothing to talk about?

announcing this was a cunt move to all involved  
 
excuse my french

Cool. Always up for more smash bros.

Lol

lol, Iwata, stop ruining your franchises with overexcitement.

Several years is probably not the phrase you wanted to hear when asking how far off the next Smash Bros. game was,

I for one don't mind the idea of waiting several years until my friends who own nintendo consoles all hand me my ass constantly.

Well well, Iwata. You can't back out now. : )

By that logic, Final Fantasy XIX is coming soon.

OK, not sure this was worth mentioning. He did this with Melee too, when he went on record and said that the first he'd heard of a Wii Smash Bros. was when he saw the logo at the Nintendo presser. Not sure why he feels the need to point this stuff out when Nintendo is simply promising the game as a publisher.

I thought they had said Smash Bros didn't exist yet, but that they would eventually put it on the WiiU when they announced it, I didn't get the feeling it had already started based on what Iwata said, he seemed to be promising that it would come someday.

@theoldhouse said:

announcing this was a cunt move to all involved excuse my french

Yep, this was my biggest problem with Nintendo's conference. It seemed like they were just going through a check-list of things people wanted to see, it was all very phony.

They showed off a lot of great 3DS titles.. None of which have release dates. They announced a new Smash Brothers but didn't show it at all, and then said they shouldn't have mentioned it yet because it hasn't even started development.. and they delayed the e-shop for several weeks (which the 3DS badly needed at launch), just so they could mention at E3 that it "had just been launched!".

But he said this at E3. He said the game wasn't in development because the team was working on Kid Icarus: Uprising but the team was set to start working on it as soon as Icarus was out. 

:<

People didn't know this? I knew a bunch of people blew their load at the very mention of SSB, but I remember Iwata saying during the conference that it was going to be coming, but the dev team that would make it is currently working on Kid Icarus, so obviously there wasn't even a game yet, nor will there be one until something like 2013 probably.

@Lonely_Ogre said:

I thought they had said Smash Bros didn't exist yet, but that they would eventually put it on the WiiU when they announced it, I didn't get the feeling it had already started based on what Iwata said, he seemed to be promising that it would come someday.

I think all he said was the next Smash Bros. game would be coming to both the WiiU and the 3DS and that's it. That's all I remember hearing anyway. I never assumed it would be anytime soon. Especially because I'm only buying a WiiU whenever that game does come out. I bought a Wii at launch and I'm not being suckered in again. Plus, by then they hopefully have a new Mario that corresponds to Super Mario 3DS or a new Star Fox (I have dreams) or something.

So far all the news from Nintendo post-E3 has been bad.

Oh, remember our youthful optimism?

Gah! Alex really needs to stop using that term "a thing" over and over. You used to be cool, Alex.

Everything about the Wii U has been handled poorly

Yeah I thought this was pretty obvious already.  

Anything for a buck uh Nintendo?

They did that with Brawl and the Wii, too. It was almost 3 years before it came out. :/

Iwata the slave-driver.

Wasn't this what he said during the Press Conference?

That was how I interpreted it atleast.

well... next smash bros in 6-8 years then?

@raiz265 said:

well... next smash bros in 6-8 years then?

I don't think it will be that extreme.

@theoldhouse said:

announcing this was a cunt move to all involved excuse my french

Yep, this was my biggest problem with Nintendo's conference. It seemed like they were just going through a check-list of things people wanted to see, it was all very phony.

They showed off a lot of great 3DS titles.. None of which have release dates. They announced a new Smash Brothers but didn't show it at all, and then said they shouldn't have mentioned it yet because it hasn't even started development.. and they delayed the e-shop for several weeks (which the 3DS badly needed at launch), just so they could mention at E3 that it "had just been launched!".

Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS in 2014. I'm calling it now.

I do hope Smash Dojo blog returns. Love keeping up with that, until the tripping entry T_T.

People might not remember but Smash brawl had pretty much every single japanese game dev talent involved in one way or another. Just look at the credits of the amount of artists that did music for that game is mindblowing.

Have no clue how they can top that game in terms of content. And it's probably smash alone that sells me on a wii U. Too bad I'll probably be out of college by then T_T.

what do you think 5 years before it is released? 4 maybe? or am i too far off...

Old news... is this a repeat? I swear that this was even said ON THE E3 BOMBCAST so. Why is it just showing up now?

@kashif1 said:

@WinterSnowblind said:

@theoldhouse said:

announcing this was a cunt move to all involved excuse my french

Yep, this was my biggest problem with Nintendo's conference. It seemed like they were just going through a check-list of things people wanted to see, it was all very phony.

They showed off a lot of great 3DS titles.. None of which have release dates. They announced a new Smash Brothers but didn't show it at all, and then said they shouldn't have mentioned it yet because it hasn't even started development.. and they delayed the e-shop for several weeks (which the 3DS badly needed at launch), just so they could mention at E3 that it "had just been launched!".

They tried to repeat last year's conference but they didn't do it too well. Still the entire event is legitimized by that orchestra.

I think it's sad that the 'big sweeping RPG' franchise from Nintendo (Zelda) never has had, and probably never will have live orchestral music anywhere in the game.

I thought it was pretty ironic that they would have a live orchestra play music from games that, to me, have been stuck in the 2000's with beeps and boops.

Sure I think we all like our quaint video game soundtracks, but for your big money franchise it's time to put the London Symphony Orchestra behind a few songs like everyone else does.

Gah! Alex really needs to stop using that term "a thing" over and over. You used to be cool, Alex.

OK, a little late on this.  Didn't nintendo say this a while back?  Oh yes, here is an article saying this same thing... almost 2 weeks ago... 
http://kotaku.com/5809850/cold-water-thrown-on-smash-bros-for-wii-u-and-3ds

This is news? He made it pretty clear during the press conference that this game didn't exist yet, he just said they were going to make it and have it do something with the 3DS

Okay, Nintendo fine. I'll still wait for whenever those Smash Bros games come out before I buy your system, as I did with the Wii. Kinda annoying that it's "several" years away, but there's gonna be a ton of games in between then, I think I can wait.

@TheHBK said:

OK, a little late on this. Didn't nintendo say this a while back? Oh yes, here is an article saying this same thing... almost 2 weeks ago...
http://kotaku.com/5809850/cold-water-thrown-on-smash-bros-for-wii-u-and-3ds

Sure, but then you'd have to actually visit Kotaku.

Well I hope Lucas, Meta Knight and Olimar stay in and they get in Travis Touchdown and Mega Man or Ryu. After that, do what you will I guess. I don't expect this until 2013 at the earliest. 

What the point of this story, it's still going to be made....

Well it's Smash Bros. game, not too hard to figure out how that game is going to play or look like even with any new Wii U tech. Unless they do something radically different (like the jump in art style from SF3 to SF4), I'd guess that the upcoming Smash Bros. game will look like the last one with slightly better backgrounds.

 Super Smash Bros Forever ... 3D

@TadThuggish said:

So far all the news from Nintendo post-E3 has been bad.

Oh, remember our youthful optimism?

What the WII-U will be like is hard to tell by this point. But there has been good news and reasons to be excited for people who digs a little deeper, honestly I don't think the GB staff is one of these people. Here is what Gabe says about it, from Zeldainformer for example:

""Today, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell talked about the possibility of bringing Valve games to the Wii U.

"Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation. It sort of fits better into the scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model," said Newell, "We've always loved Nintendo. Now it's a lot easier to look at Wii U and have it fit within that framework."""

Meh

I'd rather see a decent portable iteration for the 3DS. That's a game that could be super fun portable.

@jabbertrack: Ok Zelda ain't no RPG dude! (i'll stop being such a pedant now) 
 
And I was under the impression the new zelda was getting orchestrated music this time 
 
edit:http://www.zeldauniverse.net/zelda-news/skyward-sword-will-have-orchestral-soundtrack/

I knew he made it up on the spot!

@jabbertrack: Would not be too surprising. Mario Galaxy had orchestra.

(,_, ) okay