New Smash Bros may take 'several years'

The new Smash Bros. game promised for the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS might not arrive for quite a while, according to series creator Masahiro Sakurai. In a Famitsu column (via 1UP), Sakurai indicated that it could take "several years" before we see the Smash Bros game release.

"Right now, we're devoting all our manpower to working on Kid Icarus [Uprising]," he said. "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 to attract new team members."

During the E3 2011 Nintendo press briefing, company president Satoru Iwata announced the two Smash Bros projects, but coyly said he "shouldn't go into any details today." While this admission from Sakurai doesn't technically conflict with the announcement, Iwata's comments seemed to imply there were more details to share.

Sakurai also addressed his reasoning behind bringing the game to both Nintendo platforms. "If we went solely for the Wii U, the HD graphics would really bump up the visual effects, but then we'd be stuck in another arms race," he said. "If we made the game another extension over the 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 in it.

"It wouldn't be a fruitful competition, but doing something completely new would be difficult for many reasons, not the 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."