Super Smash Bros Ultimate Director Skeptical Future Titles Can Match Its Scope
Super Smash Bros Ultimate Director Skeptical Future Titles Can Match Its Scope
by theitguyforever
26 Comments
smashboi888
He’s said this ever since the very first Smash Ultimate direct, and yet tons of people are convinced they’ll just port Ultimate and add some new characters to it for some reason.
People always compare it to Mario Kart 8, but Mario Kart 8’s only 3rd-party content was like three Mii costumes and a handful of IRL car stuff. There’s way, *way* too much 3rd-party content in Smash Ultimate they’d have to renegotiate for in a port, and that’d require a lot of money. Plus, Mario Kart 8 released on a failed console, Smash Ultimate released on the dang Nintendo Switch and has become one of the best-selling video games of all time.
Why not just leave Ultimate untouched? It was the perfect culmination of every Smash game that came before it, being so big that it’s scale cannot be topped. What’s so wrong with having a smaller-scale game with lots of new content next time?
Pinbenterjamin
It is definitely an interesting title to follow; It is truly the ‘Ultimate’ version of Smash, and crushing more characters into a follow-up game starts to set an unrealistic precedent.
I think the best option, potentially, is to give it the Mario Kart 8 treatment, and just continually release a version on the latest Nintendo hardware, keeping the core physics, and adding small QoL updates as the game ages.
You have to avoid a TF2 situation, where the game never receives updates again, but you also can’t just keep adding nonsense to the game in order to fulfill some arbitrary cadence for updates.
I think a re-release on the Switch 2, with potential for new stages, online features, and *maybe* new modes is a good start. If Nintendo must follow through on their new tournament guidelines, they should bolster the online features so that the main draw of the game is still there throughout its potentially decade-long lifetime. Something akin to Rocket League; Online tournaments, ranks, etc.
You can’t imagine either that, in 20 years, this will still be the most current Smash, so there has to be a new title in the future. I have no idea what that looks like right now.
It’s a tough spot to be in for the franchise looking forward, but in its current state, it is a truly fantastic game.
Anueploid
It’s the same thing with Mario Kart 8 honestly. How do you even make a new one that doesn’t feel like 100% downgrade.
bryanglican
I’m hoping that if the next console is fully backwards compatible that the next Smash will be a reboot of sorts, with a pared down roster, completely reimagined move sets and new mechanics.
SwampyBogbeard
Do we really need new articles every time he says this?
Envizon
I mean, he’s said this since the game was announced. Kinda hard to follow up a game that has basically everything from the series history. That being said, if there’s anyone I trust to accomplish that, it’s Sakurai.
Just watch the next Smash Bros. just be Fire Emblem sword wielding main characters, Mario but he’s now a gimmick character, and Pokémon but only new ones (regardless of popularity). Back to only gimmick stages, tripping, slow recovery, items always on, etc. Would be pretty funny lol
Framed-Photo
I want a new smash game, and I honestly want less characters.
The character diversity is cool, but when you have too many it’s just more of a burden then anything for me. I’d much rather have a more refined roster, and have them focus on making the mechanics better, adding more content like individualized break the targets and a comprehensive story mode, better online, things like that.
redchris18
Smash has won the 2D fighting game genre. The next one should be the Smash version of Power Stone.
ManiacalTeddy
I could see the next Smash greatly scale back on characters and instead allow for more custom movesets ala Smash 4. Even if they don’t, I expect it’ll be different in some new way, since they can’t match the scale of Ultimate.
bingbong6977
I thought ultimate was the finale
NVD6432
Just make full backwards compatibility a thing on all future systems.
Kashmir1089
They don’t need to match it’s scope, SSBU is always going to be around. What I hope for is a more “tight” fighting game that looks really cool and pretty/flashy when both players are highly skilled at the game. If they can do that and still make it beginner and casual friendly, they have a winner.
randomtoken
I don’t know man, Sakurai has a tendency of cutting my favorite characters (Mewtwo in Melee, cut in Brawl. Lucas in Brawl, cut in Smash 4 previous to DLC).
Just leave Ridley, Rosalina and Mewtwo untouched and I’ll be happy.
Have_A_Jelly_Baby
Mario Kart 8 has the same “problem”. How do you do a Mario Kart 9 without people complaining about relatively sparse content compared to 8?
Chromattix
Yeah I can’t see how they could top it. I’ve said that about every Smash game actually and they always surprised me but the higher the bar gets the less likely anyone is going to leap over it.
If they can’t then just port Ultimate, touch up the graphics to match the new standard, give us (good quality) DLC packs (new fighters and stages) and a decent story mode or some other challenge that’ll extend the single player value of the game. They essentially did this with Mario Kart 8 and most of us were fine with it since it was just so damn good it warranted the extended lifespan it ended up getting.
HauntedMike
Cut down the roster to a few characters. Add some out of the blue new guys.
Subspace emissary 2.
that’ll probably do it.
IAmThePonch
I mean they could go the mk8 route and just rerelase it on the switch 2 and add even more stuff to it
skygz
They never needed to reinvent the wheel… just keep updating Ultimate. Maybe a new character yearly. Bring it to the next console with some modest graphic improvements.
ForgottenForce
If we get a reboot I just want Mega Man to stay (though personally I’d want more Mega Man rep 👀)
DoctorShemp
I don’t think it will either. I expect the next title to make a lot of people disappointed and angry.
I’m not particularly excited about the prospect of a more fleshed out single player. Smash at its core is a multiplayer game and that’s where the replay-ability lies. Brawl had probably the best single player campaign of any smash title and its widely regarded as the weakest entry in the series. A story mode is a nice feature but it just has never mattered that much in the grand scheme of a game like this.
I don’t expect the gameplay physics to change much from what they are currently, just like it didn’t really change from Smash 4 to Ultimate.
Nintendo has surprised in the past so I’m not going to write them off completely but I’m really skeptical of what they could do to motivate moving over to the new smash game despite content cuts. Like we saw with Melee, they really don’t like it when people prefer an old smash game over the new one, so it will be interesting to see what they do to prevent that problem from happening again.
1up_muffin
Nice. The next smash should be smaller, not bigger.
Josephalopod
Ultimate is the Karl Havoc of video games – there’s just too much shit in it. I was overwhelmed and stopped playing/didn’t get the dlc. Go back to just Nintendo’s All-Stars like in Melee and make something better instead of always just going bigger.
MonochromeTyrant
All I want out of the next Smash is K. Rool to remain, tighter mechanics (there’s a lot of jank in Ultimate’s interactions), and rollback netcode. Anything else is a bonus. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ultimate became a GaaS platform and continued on for a while longer, with both new characters and “seasonal” mechanical changes.
Yeebach
I feel like the best option is to build off of Ultimate. It doesn’t have to just be “Ultimate port with more stuff,” but rather than build from the ground up, they could at least use some assets from Ultimate, and go from there. Make any changes they want to the game engine or characters, but this way less development time is spent creating the same characters again, and more time is spent on new characters, stages, modes, etc. If a third party character can’t return due to licensing issues that’s unfortunate, but this way no Nintendo character has to be cut.
I know some people want a major reboot but I think at this point, the huge roster is the big draw for Smash, and I feel like pandering specifically to the people that want a more refined fighting game by sacrificing half the cast isn’t going to do as well as trying to bring back as many characters as possible, like a Smash 4 situation. Not to mention, I feel like the cut roster would be in a weird situation in terms of newcomers, since most of the major Nintendo characters are already in and getting newcomers would probably seem less important in the grand scheme of things. Imagine Waluigi finally gets in, but only after half the Mario roster got cut. It would feel weird.
-BluBone-
It’s doesn’t need to match the scope, just give us functional netcode.
10voltsam
Honestly I hope the next game focuses more on different game modes rather than roster. I love smash ultimate but I feel like it lacked in game modes especially for single players.
26 Comments
He’s said this ever since the very first Smash Ultimate direct, and yet tons of people are convinced they’ll just port Ultimate and add some new characters to it for some reason.
People always compare it to Mario Kart 8, but Mario Kart 8’s only 3rd-party content was like three Mii costumes and a handful of IRL car stuff. There’s way, *way* too much 3rd-party content in Smash Ultimate they’d have to renegotiate for in a port, and that’d require a lot of money. Plus, Mario Kart 8 released on a failed console, Smash Ultimate released on the dang Nintendo Switch and has become one of the best-selling video games of all time.
Why not just leave Ultimate untouched? It was the perfect culmination of every Smash game that came before it, being so big that it’s scale cannot be topped. What’s so wrong with having a smaller-scale game with lots of new content next time?
It is definitely an interesting title to follow; It is truly the ‘Ultimate’ version of Smash, and crushing more characters into a follow-up game starts to set an unrealistic precedent.
I think the best option, potentially, is to give it the Mario Kart 8 treatment, and just continually release a version on the latest Nintendo hardware, keeping the core physics, and adding small QoL updates as the game ages.
You have to avoid a TF2 situation, where the game never receives updates again, but you also can’t just keep adding nonsense to the game in order to fulfill some arbitrary cadence for updates.
I think a re-release on the Switch 2, with potential for new stages, online features, and *maybe* new modes is a good start. If Nintendo must follow through on their new tournament guidelines, they should bolster the online features so that the main draw of the game is still there throughout its potentially decade-long lifetime. Something akin to Rocket League; Online tournaments, ranks, etc.
You can’t imagine either that, in 20 years, this will still be the most current Smash, so there has to be a new title in the future. I have no idea what that looks like right now.
It’s a tough spot to be in for the franchise looking forward, but in its current state, it is a truly fantastic game.
It’s the same thing with Mario Kart 8 honestly. How do you even make a new one that doesn’t feel like 100% downgrade.
I’m hoping that if the next console is fully backwards compatible that the next Smash will be a reboot of sorts, with a pared down roster, completely reimagined move sets and new mechanics.
Do we really need new articles every time he says this?
I mean, he’s said this since the game was announced. Kinda hard to follow up a game that has basically everything from the series history. That being said, if there’s anyone I trust to accomplish that, it’s Sakurai.
Just watch the next Smash Bros. just be Fire Emblem sword wielding main characters, Mario but he’s now a gimmick character, and Pokémon but only new ones (regardless of popularity). Back to only gimmick stages, tripping, slow recovery, items always on, etc. Would be pretty funny lol
I want a new smash game, and I honestly want less characters.
The character diversity is cool, but when you have too many it’s just more of a burden then anything for me. I’d much rather have a more refined roster, and have them focus on making the mechanics better, adding more content like individualized break the targets and a comprehensive story mode, better online, things like that.
Smash has won the 2D fighting game genre. The next one should be the Smash version of Power Stone.
I could see the next Smash greatly scale back on characters and instead allow for more custom movesets ala Smash 4. Even if they don’t, I expect it’ll be different in some new way, since they can’t match the scale of Ultimate.
I thought ultimate was the finale
Just make full backwards compatibility a thing on all future systems.
They don’t need to match it’s scope, SSBU is always going to be around. What I hope for is a more “tight” fighting game that looks really cool and pretty/flashy when both players are highly skilled at the game. If they can do that and still make it beginner and casual friendly, they have a winner.
I don’t know man, Sakurai has a tendency of cutting my favorite characters (Mewtwo in Melee, cut in Brawl. Lucas in Brawl, cut in Smash 4 previous to DLC).
Just leave Ridley, Rosalina and Mewtwo untouched and I’ll be happy.
Mario Kart 8 has the same “problem”. How do you do a Mario Kart 9 without people complaining about relatively sparse content compared to 8?
Yeah I can’t see how they could top it. I’ve said that about every Smash game actually and they always surprised me but the higher the bar gets the less likely anyone is going to leap over it.
If they can’t then just port Ultimate, touch up the graphics to match the new standard, give us (good quality) DLC packs (new fighters and stages) and a decent story mode or some other challenge that’ll extend the single player value of the game. They essentially did this with Mario Kart 8 and most of us were fine with it since it was just so damn good it warranted the extended lifespan it ended up getting.
Cut down the roster to a few characters. Add some out of the blue new guys.
Subspace emissary 2.
that’ll probably do it.
I mean they could go the mk8 route and just rerelase it on the switch 2 and add even more stuff to it
They never needed to reinvent the wheel… just keep updating Ultimate. Maybe a new character yearly. Bring it to the next console with some modest graphic improvements.
If we get a reboot I just want Mega Man to stay (though personally I’d want more Mega Man rep 👀)
I don’t think it will either. I expect the next title to make a lot of people disappointed and angry.
I’m not particularly excited about the prospect of a more fleshed out single player. Smash at its core is a multiplayer game and that’s where the replay-ability lies. Brawl had probably the best single player campaign of any smash title and its widely regarded as the weakest entry in the series. A story mode is a nice feature but it just has never mattered that much in the grand scheme of a game like this.
I don’t expect the gameplay physics to change much from what they are currently, just like it didn’t really change from Smash 4 to Ultimate.
Nintendo has surprised in the past so I’m not going to write them off completely but I’m really skeptical of what they could do to motivate moving over to the new smash game despite content cuts. Like we saw with Melee, they really don’t like it when people prefer an old smash game over the new one, so it will be interesting to see what they do to prevent that problem from happening again.
Nice. The next smash should be smaller, not bigger.
Ultimate is the Karl Havoc of video games – there’s just too much shit in it. I was overwhelmed and stopped playing/didn’t get the dlc. Go back to just Nintendo’s All-Stars like in Melee and make something better instead of always just going bigger.
All I want out of the next Smash is K. Rool to remain, tighter mechanics (there’s a lot of jank in Ultimate’s interactions), and rollback netcode. Anything else is a bonus. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ultimate became a GaaS platform and continued on for a while longer, with both new characters and “seasonal” mechanical changes.
I feel like the best option is to build off of Ultimate. It doesn’t have to just be “Ultimate port with more stuff,” but rather than build from the ground up, they could at least use some assets from Ultimate, and go from there. Make any changes they want to the game engine or characters, but this way less development time is spent creating the same characters again, and more time is spent on new characters, stages, modes, etc. If a third party character can’t return due to licensing issues that’s unfortunate, but this way no Nintendo character has to be cut.
I know some people want a major reboot but I think at this point, the huge roster is the big draw for Smash, and I feel like pandering specifically to the people that want a more refined fighting game by sacrificing half the cast isn’t going to do as well as trying to bring back as many characters as possible, like a Smash 4 situation. Not to mention, I feel like the cut roster would be in a weird situation in terms of newcomers, since most of the major Nintendo characters are already in and getting newcomers would probably seem less important in the grand scheme of things. Imagine Waluigi finally gets in, but only after half the Mario roster got cut. It would feel weird.
It’s doesn’t need to match the scope, just give us functional netcode.
Honestly I hope the next game focuses more on different game modes rather than roster. I love smash ultimate but I feel like it lacked in game modes especially for single players.