One might wonder why we’re reporting on Masahiro Sakurai posting a picture on Twitter today, but maybe there’s something to it, and maybe not.
Sakurai’s photo simply shows the two men he met up with today: Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada, and Square Enix’s Naoki Yoshida. While Bandai Namco and Square Enix can be said to be rivals in the video game industry, Sakurai is a freelancer nowadays, so maybe they met up to see if Sakurai will take a new project from either company?
We are all probably thinking of the same thing, so let’s get right to it. Sakurai remains the head of development for the Super Smash Bros series, years after Sakurai himself left the company that makes those games, Nintendo.
In the last incarnation of the franchise, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Sakurai used the largest amount of crossover characters from non-Nintendo franchises, including those from Bandai Namco and Square Enix. Of course, they had even more than that, as characters from Capcom, Sega, Konami, and more also appeared in the franchise.
Quite famously, Harada finally got one of his own dreams come true as Heihachi Mishima, now canonically dead in the Tekken franchise, gets to live on as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Subsequently, Square Enix has an unparalleled level of representation in Super Smash Bros, as not only Dragon Quest’s Hero, but Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud Strife and Sephiroth appear as playable characters in the game.
Sakurai has said before that it seems difficult to bring all those characters back again for the next game, but if anything, they would have to negotiate that with all the rights holders.
As far as we can tell, this tweet may have just been about a casual get together, but it’s hard to believe that the three would not end up talking about Super Smash Bros at one point. Even if they don’t get new Square Enix and Bandai Namco guest characters, they could talk about new terms for licensing the ones that are already there.
And we know Super Smash Bros is not far from Sakurai’s mind, as he had recently hinted he was planning to end his YouTube channel soon, in favor of starting work on the next game again. Bandai Namco has helped Sakurai make those games in recent years, and Harada would definitely have to plan how to keep working with Sakurai, while working on Tekken 8.
If nothing else, this photo is certainly a reminder that with a new console on the way from Nintendo, and new Super Smash Bros needs to be made for it as well. Maybe Sakurai hasn’t properly started working on it yet, but he’s probably already planning for it.
