First off, fans of the series should be thrilled – when the game was originally announced, development hadn’t even started! But now, the pace is set and Masahiro Sakurai is giving the game his full attention, along with Namco Bandai.
That means right now, there’s talk about what needs to be done to keep the series fresh and progressive. Some believe that means adding more characters (a la GameCube and Wii), but Sakurai has actually told Nintendo Power magazine that a simple roster expansion isn’t going to be the main focus:
“It isn’t a matter of ‘if the next game has 50 characters, that’ll be enough.’ There is a certain charm to games that have huge casts of playable characters, but they tend to have issues with game balance and it becomes very difficult to fine-tune each character and have them all feel distinctive…. In terms of quantity, we’ve probably already reached the limit of what’s feasible. I think a change of direction may be what’s needed.”
Note he didn’t say there wouldn’t be new characters… but at the same time, it doesn’t look like we’ll see a huge roster expansion. It’s more likely we’ll see things like new game modes or features.
At this point, Sakurai has released a whiteboard doodle of character we might (or for some, definitely will) see in the game, but either way, there’s a long wait ahead.
