Masahiro Sakurai Once Again Highlights The Possibility He'll Step Away From Game Development

Well that's fine. Stop talking about it and retire already, then.

Now watch him make Smash 5 many years later

He should assemble a team which can do things just the way he wants it. That way he could just manage everything, instead of making everything with his own two hands.

I bet stock holders are happy to hear this.

A 9-5 job this is not. Sure you make some good money but the demand is far too high. He needs to take a year off for the quality of work he's done. Would hate to see him give up what he's so good at.

@JtotheY so your solution is cloning?

Though seriously, I feel bad for how it's taken its toll on him, especially with how demanding fans can be. I'm fine if he lets someone else take over; it won't be the same but he earned the rest. Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if he did another one anyways, he has trouble letting his fans down...

The real issue here is that the industry as a whole is really plagued by this. Devs are hardly the best paid jobs around, nor are they the most secure ones, but the demands are still rather high and pressure seems to be extreme at times. Sakurai-san is not the only dev out there who has obviously seen severe impact of his work on his personal life and even his health - not by a long shot. Something gotta give at some point ...

"Source Kotaku". Misquoting people's statements to make clickbait headlines.

Well, bye.

I don't blame him. The days of doing the same thing until you are old and grey are ending. If you make your success do what makes you happy. There should be more to life than making somebody else rich.

Yes thank you for adding and spending time on useless modes. We all appreciate the lack of an adventure mode. If it were for not online and having the ability to play others mostly lag free I would have returned this one just like Brawl. Yeah I know brawl had an adventure mode, but that one was ovey long and played like a bad platformer.

@ShadJV YES!
But based on previous interviews, he doesn't seem to fully trust the people who work under him. If he could assemble a team that he DOES trust, and who understand and follow his vision, he could go on for ages creating games that way. He doesn't have his own studio right now, does he?

This could be a blessing in disguise. If more of Nintendo's veteran developers stepped back we could see a more adventurous direction in the future of Nintendo games

Seriously I get NintendoLife need these articles for clicks but you people in the comments need to understand there is a big difference between saying"Jeez that last project I just did was pretty intense and I am not sure if I could do that again" and "I am considering retiring" and that these 'journalists' intentionally muddle the two.

While I'm not a fan of Sakurai's recent "efforts", I'd like to see him in a sort of supervisor role, similarly to Miyamoto. It's his ideas and openness to crazy concepts that make his titles stand out - and Kirby definitely wouldn't remain the same without him.

I feel like if he just didn't overdue it, he'd be ok. Why did he overdue it anyways? Couldn't they just give him a bigger dev team?

When Kotaku shared this topic on Facebook. I couldn't help but get involved and find... REAL JERKS! People replying "Wah Wah. Crybaby" and "What an Emo." It disgusts me that these people actually deserve to play Smash. What these jerks don't know is that Sakurai put's TONS of effort, work, time, money and ideas to make such a great game we appreciate which only comes once a Console Gen. Smash community... seriously.

Nintendo needs to tell him he can't be involved in all the miniscule details and to trust his team to take care of some of this stuff. Sakurai seems to be a control freak, which isn't a terrible thing, but he lets his extremity work him to an unhealthy state. Learn to delegate, or Iwata should delegate for him to keep him healthy.

I think this is more a matter of mr. Sakurai's obsessive personality than anything else. He's known to control every single minutious detail to the point that his health suffers. I'd really like to see him keep helming the Smash series, but I think it may be time to find someone to share at least part of the responsibility woith him.

@FritzFrapp seriously - they should allow him to delegate - make him a VP or something - give him a vacation - ANYTHING - just support the man - he is great

This poor guy needs a serious break.
Lets be honest here, Nintendo is what it is because of people like him.
People, that work their behinds off day and night to produce a game thats simply finished, polished and almost perfect.
But its no use if they overdo it like he did.
Take a well earned break Mr Sakurai, pause for a year or two and then start again with renewed energy.

He's obviously miserable so it's time to step away. You have nothing else left to prove. Thank you for everything.

He said he'd stop at Brawl... even said the same thing when he finished Melee... Seriously dude. stahp lying to yourself. Retire. Enjoy life.

If he steps away from game development, I hope he stays with Nintendo in some capacity. Perhaps mentoring young developers or in management. As good as SSB plays, I would like him involved more in action-adventure games like KI:Uprising.

You don't see Miyamoto, inafune, Kojima, or any other developers crying like this. Sakurai is the only one who acts like this because he thinks he is entitled for everyone to like his games. Crybaby Sakurai man up or be quiet and leave.

The Miiverse comments and "please Sakurai" nonsense made me feel sorry for him. I'm sure there may some management elements he may be able to improve, but the Nintendo fans bombarded him with nonsense and cruelty. I'd hate to see him retire, but can't say I'd blame him.

He should just help with ideas and stuff. He has numberidus.

Retire or keep going make up your choice Sakurai!

ok, Someone with the same talents or better with a better attitude can take his place. Seriously, he has a garbage attitude. It is amazing he even got a job working with people. His philosophy is if there is something wrong, it is the consumers fault.

I completely fail to see what was so daunting about creating these Smash rehashes. The template is already in place. There was nothing ambitious about the single player mode, and no one seems to care about the new secondary modes

@Einherjar I agree.

@Everyone He could ask Nintendo to add more people to the Smash Bros. team, not everything is black or white. At the end of the day. he's tired, not guilty. A bit childish but nobody is perfect.

If he's so terribly miserable doing it, stop talking about stopping and just stop. I know some people won't agree, but someone else could pick up Kid Icarus and Smash and do just fine with it.

Dude, just chill for a while.

1. Nintendo doesn't need the press of these comments,
2. The new guys need training,
3. And Dark Pit and Lucina were highly questionable calls (plus whatever bad moves we can confirm were his to call, like almost not including GANONDORF),

So I think he can consult a bit, but it's time for new blood that's classically trained.

I want to see him work on passion projects that are smaller in scale in the future. Let him do what he wants for a bit. I think he deserves that much.

Everyone I think you forgot for 10 minutes that the new game is awful and Sakurai doesn't care about it since there isn't wavedashing

@NintyMan

We all work hard at our jobs (at least we should) but he has a garbage attitude. Sure, he puts in a lot of work but that is why we choose jobs that we love to do. But seriously, the attitude he gives to the consumers is quite horrible. To him, everything is our fault.

Sakurai really does deserve a break. If he wants someone else to take the helm, that's fine. I think what would suit him best is Miyamoto's role: Supervisor

When is shiggy gonna step away and retire? I can't wait for Iwata, Shiggy and then Reggie to retire. It'll happen soon. They're old.

Sakurai, you need a vacation. Seriously, if I ever see him in real life I will walk up to him and hug him. Though it does seem like he has a bit of some trust issues...

I just wanna see some new young people in there with some fresh idea. I really wanna see nintendo release a console that isn't necessarily the most powerful of all but on par with everyone else so they can convince 3rd party devs to make games for the next home console. Also work in their relationship with 3rdPDevs.
I'm excited and have a feeling their next console will be a fusion but I suspect it will run on the lowest grade hardware as possible and once again alienate outside devs from making games on their console.

Still no DPad support.

Anyway, I don't want him to retire yet. He should step away from Smash if his passion to make another is no longer 100% if not more. He should take on lighter projects.

Well there goes Kid Icarus..

@ikki5 I don't hear someone blaming consumers. I hear someone who is incredibly devoted to producing the best product he can. In this quote is directly thanking the consumer.

Yeah we all work our jobs, but if anyone who works the way Sakurai does is definitely susceptible to burnout. He makes great products and we shouldn't be so eager to push him out the door because he admitted he is human.

@NintyMan I take it you missed the part when people were asking him why he included clones and he called them all children and it cannot be helped and just responses to criticism over all. It is just how he responds to people. like come on, people go on about how hard he works, he goes on about how people don't appreciate him because they "don't understand how hard he works". Hell, we all know how hard he works. a lot of us probably work just as hard as him and when they get criticism, I'd hope they'd respond to it in a professional manner instead of throwing disrespectful insults.

I hate to do this but I see many responses of people saying how we need to respect him, while this is true, the same should apply for him more than it should for us as it is us who give him his pay cheque. Really... we can live without his games, his job cannot live without us.

I do retract my statement about him blaming consumers because I found that to be another guy with a similar name but it still doesn't change his crappy attitude.

Why are you people so demanding? This guy has worked hard enough to make these awesome games. In my opinion, he deserves a break. You people act as if he needs to be in the game's development for it to be good. That's not always true. I'm positive that we will see a new Smash Bros in the future, most likely on Nintendo's next home console or handheld. And with the success of the Wii U and 3DS, I'm sure it will be awhile before we can even start thinking about the next Smash game(s). We just got new games last year, so instead of complaining about the next smash, enjoy the ones we have.

Why can't companies take extra care to their workers knowing that they need them for the job done? Yes, in the gaming biz its a very hard thing but the fact is, people are suffering just to make a game when today, its getting easier to make games. I'm not saying Nintendo has to stop doing their own way of making games. I'm just saying that working long hours for just one accomplishment is just ridiculous even outside of gaming. If the game is rushed, its going to be buggy. If its delayed, it'll affect sales..... the world of gaming can't make up its mind.

@Justin83593 I agree. One man isn't going to decide the fate of a brand or its legacy. When Miyamoto retires, Nintendo will be prepared to face it and move on. When Iwata resigns, Nintendo will move on with a new CEO and that's that. what I'm worried about is what direction Nintendo will face when this happens and that's exactly what many are worried about Sakurai.

Personally, besides Kirby, I'm not much into his games even for Uprising. But I will agree that Uprising should be ported to the Wii U at the very least.

When I form my own company, I promise that I'll make it easy for my employees to get a job no matter what the outcome except in some cases. I'll promise that every worker doesn't have to work like even 12 hrs a day!
It'll be well balanced.

Hopefully he'll either be able to retire by now, or he can take a mentoring role like Miyamoto.

@Syrek24 Thank you so much. It's nice to actually see some people with some real common sense every once in a while.

He just needs to take on smaller projects and learn to not do everything himself. When you are dealing with a 200 man project and you are doing most of it on your own, it's no wonder you struggle

He keeps on about giving up just do it then it makes it sound like he made the game by him self but shortly it was a huge team of people. Made if he got a bigger team of game dev's it would be easier ?

Sakurai makes brilliant games, and on Miiverse everybody slams him because he's not specifically tailoring Smash Bros towards that one person who wants everything about smash bros his way.

given he has put his health on the line he deserves a break

I guess all it took was this article to make me realise how bad the Smash fanbase is. Everyone's a crybaby. No one's happy no matter how hard Sakurai works. Everyone assumes they know how to make a game as if it's super easy.

Conclusion? 5/6ths of the fanbase must be 10 year olds. Like seriously. Only ignorant little brats look down at a hard working man and squeal, "I cAN dO thAT!!!11"

Grow up kids. You're lucky your parents even think you deserve to own a console. If you're gonna try persuading me your not a kid then perhaps do so in a way that doesn't put down the efforts of an employee at Nintendo. Because that's what it comes down to.

@Jayvir If i were a major game developer, I might feel a bit like Sakurai. I have lots of ideas, but I want to make it exactly the way I see it, not have my ideas tainted by other people. No doubt a flawed way of thinking, but I can imaginr that is hiw Sakurai thinks

@Kyranosaurus I don't think it's fair to peg the Smash Community with this comment section. If I am being honest, comments like these are on almost every Nintendolife article.

Sakurai quit Nintendo because he was sick of taking orders. He started his own company, Sora, which was essentially a straight failure, which is why he ended up making games for Nintendo again as an outside contractor. But these days Nintendo is basically the only company he works for anyway. So if he doesn't want to work on big projects, that's really his deal. Personally, I think Sakurai's insistence that everything is done the way he personally wants is a huge hindrance to the development process, and it certainly was to Smash.

But...but...Sakurai awesome! TwT
He's like, Miyamoto v2.0 or something, lol

@Zach777 He was asked a question and he answered it. What makes you think he could retire?

@Ralek85 Exactly.

I think trying to make this next Smash Bros. viable for competition is part of what made it so taxing, and I hope he just does another Kid Icarus and has fun with it. I think some are right, however, that he needs to find a way to delegate some of the decisions he feels he has to make to a partner or a team. Either that or just work on much smaller projects.

I'm not a big fan of Super Smash Bros. I own it. I appreciate it, but I'd much rather play another Kid Icarus myself. And how annoying must it be to work so hard on something that is SO similar to what he did before with it. Blech.

I think he just needs a break, tbh. In a years time he might want to start making games again. If he does want to leave the industry, then he should just go for it. He has already contributed so much to the industry and I like him for that!

@Kyranosaurus I think a good chunk of it is how much we hear about how hard he works, harms his own health, etc. We don't get that for 99.9% of the industry, but it's an inseparable part of him, his identity.

I've known people who push themselves as hard as Sakurai does. As talented in their own fields, too. The problem for the people I know is that they aren't good managers. They want to perform all of the worker roles while having management authority. It's just not sustainable.

@FritzFrapp I, for one, will miss you. Hope to run into you in some other comments sections.

Here we go again, another "Sakurai whines about his job again" article. Just quit and stop crying about it. Also in a world where indie devs are a thing still wondering why he hasn't quit.

everyone here needs to calm own. he said this game was hard to make, so he may not want to do something that big again, not "noo this i my last game EVAAH! GOODBYE INDUSTRY!" wait unti something actually comes from this statement

@WaveyChristmas sakurai hasn't directed a kirby game since air ride

@FritzFrapp thank you, you're doing a good thing getting away from so many insecure fanboys, almost ruins smash bros for me sometimes. and yes this is a nintendolife thing

@DarkKirby both agreeable and disagreeable. if i was a developer i would want things done a certain way, but not work 20 hour days.

He needs a rest. Seriously. The dude has more work ethic than most governments.

He should probably let others take on more of the responsibility to reduce the strain on himself. Health comes first, always.

Surprised at all the disrespectful comments towards Sakurai. I mean, he did almost work himself to death just to deliver a game to his fans. Now everyone tosses him aside when his work is finished?

@AJere Well, the throwing insults at people it what set me off and then his constant going off at people about "Oh, I work so hard!, I injured my hand for you guys!, I'm so tired, I might retire". Well... yeah he works hard... but there is a team. The way he talks, it sounds like he did everything and doesn't seem to every acknowledge the other people who works. As for his holidays... that was really his choice to not take a day off. And for him working to hard to injure himself somehow, well, that falls in line with taking vacation times and not over exerting yourself. Like, it is not like in Japan they don't get those days off, the average time off in Japan is more than that of the USA, in fact it is almost double for paid vacation days plus the paid Statutory holidays. But seriously, he could have handed stuff to his team to take some of the work load off... and hopefully he wouldn't be so whiny... seriously, he whines about it. The game has been out for 2 months and he was going about all the work several months before the games release and making remarks to people with the "requests" that weren't the best way to express. But seriously... how many people do you know constantly go on and on about how much work and how tired they are 2 months after a finished product? A lot of what people are annoyed at are more how his attitude is towards everything. He just comes off as quite conceited... and is like he takes more credit than he actually deserves.

Tetsuya Takahash works just as hard as sakurai. You can delegate work and still make a masterpiece.. SO DO IT. Give up control

He should step away for a couple of years and enjoy life or something else. Then come back with fresh eyes if he wants to.

The funny thing is that if the gaming industry were unionized or something akin to that effect, we probably WOULD be bawling our eyes out over Sakurai-san not working hard enough, because it would mean people like Sakurai-san would not be able to work beyond 8-10 hours, depending on overtime rights and bargained agreements. If that were the case, we would not have seen Smash Bros Melee in time for Holiday 2001, Smash Bros Brawl by the critical mid 2008 junction point, nor Smash Bros 4 by this point in the year. No 12 hour workdays + no 12 hour weekend days + all overtime must be compensated generously = no Smash Bros as soon as we, the customers, want it.

It's all a great bit of irony. He's working this hard partially because he wants to, and mostly because he is encouraged to. He wouldn't have his position if he capped himself out at 10 hour days on weekdays only. That isn't a slight against him, rather, this is just the state of the industry- it expects an almost back breaking amount of work, an amount that most people would buckle under. Yet, we expect these people to perform heroic deeds for us, as if it were our privilege to be performed for.

I say, let them take their time, or work as hard as they want, but impose no harsh expectations...

Sakurai deserves a nice long vacation.

I would still like to see another Kid Icarus from him on a Nintendo home console.

@TheRegginator People like you disgust me. If Sakurai hasn't created a single worthy Smash game, how come you care about Smash to begin with?

@King_Stannis Maybe because those people aren't nearly as involved in the process as he is. He personally checks and balances every character, frame by frame. And to top it off he worked on TWO versions that ran on competely different hardware..and in under 4 years. How long has Kojima had to work on MGSV? and even Kojima himself has complained about being shackled to MGS, as has Miyamoto about letting other, younger staff take over projects.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Go read up on stuff before talking nonsense.

@TheRegginator

Smash 64 didn't really have anything the other games lack to be honest.

Melee was better for making unlocking characters much more entertaining.

Brawl was decent and gave use a way to creat levels and mixed up the gameplay

Smash 4 finetunes the gameplay further, gives or more characters in HD, smarter AI to beat up on (Amiibo rock) and quite a bit more, as well as making online better.

Smash 4's online is just fine, all depends on who you are playing against really

The level creation was a fantastic addition that really gave players a way to express what they would like a level to look like. Hard to really go wrong with that.

The altered mechanics that the two latest games made helped the battles flow better if you asked me. Being able to dodge in the air more than once ment that certain characters wouldn't be overpwered do to just pushing you off the edge with ease, while also making aerial battles faster and much more entertaining to look at.

Custom moves is another huge thing that smash 4 gives us. We may be able to unlock chars with ease but custom moves I think is something that's also worthwhile to collect. Plus we have a classic mode that's a lot more interesting.

He is quite dramatic. I'd rather him just quit than for us to have to keep hearing his complaints. I respect the guy's work, but his complaints are getting really annoying. I'd be much happier to have a developer who DOESN'T dread doing what he does.

If Sakura leaves the Smash bros development... then probably the "new man in charge" could bring us all the fan-tasies like playable characters such Ridley, King K Roll, Crystal, Midna, impa, Chrom Black Shadow... maybe a new move set for Ganondorf instead of "Captain Falcon clone" I don't know...I just try to see the good side