Sakurai explains why he feels Smash Bros. and online play aren't a good fit

Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Super Smash Bros., explains why he believes online play isn't a good fit for the series.

[Vanfernal]

I feel bad for Smash fans. Those guys have been trying to maintain the scene active for 20+ years and get nothing but hate from Nintendo.

[RoseSapphire]

Sakurai explains how he and Nintendo still don't understand how the internet works.

FTFY

[Snookies12]

Exactly, online play would be wonderful on Smash if Nintendo gave a crap about their online services. To be fair though, Nintendo's online offerings would be great if it were 15-20 years ago lol.

[jambola]

I've always said that Nintendo is either innovative and ahead of the curve
or 20 years behind, no in between

[CrimsonWing69]

I’m sorry, but if a game is MP then there’s no f*cking argument that can justify no online MP. What he says about competition being different from just playing with friends shows me how out of touch these people are.

It’s not until a new generation that understands things steps in to clean-house that we’ll see some evolution here.

[Vanfernal]

His argument is nonsensical. "You'd be limited to just playing people from your region". As opposed to being limited to playing people FROM YOUR COUCH!

[CrimsonWing69]

What I don’t get is how do you not have competition and experience the same issue if you have a friend that’s way better than you?

[GoodGuy09]

It's a big fighting game so online multiplayer is a must. Competitive smash is the only thing I see fun in these games anymore asides from the big character reveals, singleplayer is laughable and you ain't gunna have people over for couch gaming much.

If Nintendo makes a new smash, it needs a huge evolution for singleplayer/couch play to be enjoyable for me any more. But we all know they'll just do a deluxe edition for their next console lol. They really need to up their servers as well.

[NotoriousWhiz]

I can't imagine Nintendo producing a better smash game than ultimate. Roll it forward with a deluxe edition maybe with an extra character or two and call it a day.

Some other developers can try pushing platform fighters to the next level, because I don't think Nintendo is up to the task.

[DarthZoolu]

They already created a better smash brothers game than ultimate when they created melee

[masterfox]

he sounds more like is trying to justify Nintendo ineptitude to create a proper network infrastructure in order to Smash Brothers work properly online.

[shinoff2183]

I'm not one to usually talk on someone's looks but damn dud they model the mii verse after him

[DogJosha]

Nintendo needs to clean house on their upper management and any influence they have on the games. Sakurai tries to gaslight us on the last 10+ years of games working online just fine as if a stable online experience didn't exist before Brawl, let alone Ultimate. Miyamoto is determined not to let people have a fun Paper Mario full of interesting characters and fun gameplay mechanics. Nintendo as a whole has just been trying to destroy itself ever since the day Iwata took over and used his Blue Ocean strategy to turn the company into something meant for people that don't want to play games. They have the strongest IPs and should be blowing people like Sony out of the water, not that Sony is taking advantage of what they have either...

[NatsuXTheMaxspeed21]

Nintendo is strongly backed by the Japanese yakuza and communist parties since its creation. They old heads will always be in control .

[PapaBop]

Smash and online play aren't a good fit because Nintendo couldn't care less about their net play. The lack of ethernet port shows that, games like Smash just aren't designed to work with wifi.

[Terry_B]

lol..this company lost me 20 years ago and will never get me (my money) again.

[Miraak82]

Acting like people have RL friends ... *smh ... real classy Nintendo .

[Nintentional]

And yet I still have 260 hours on Smash Ultimate online lol

[sadraiden]

I really ran out of steam playing Ultimate about a year in. The netcode is just.....

[TheEnigma313]

Clueless Nintendo when it comes to online. They're stuck in the past.

[-Foxtrot]

Nintendo being out of touch again

I’m shocked

[Pyrofire95]

I don't known if you know this but you're the most iconic commenter on this website, at least to me.
I knew if I went to a bigger news story I'd find you. This one was literally my first attempt. I just think it's cool to have that kind of recognizably in the chaos of the internet despite just being one of the spectators. Like an N4G community thing. Anyway, I've gone on this Fox-chase probably because I'm putting off going to bed. Bye bye.

[gold_drake]

i feel like he experienced the absolute mess nintendo servers are and thought
"yeh, that aint it".

[DarthZoolu]

Breaking news, Nintendo whines about having to make games at the modern standard