It’s been two and a half years since Masahiro Sakurai, best known for directing Smash Bros. Ultimate and the other entries in Nintendo’s hit platform fighting series, took a break from development to create a YouTube channel dedicated to educating fans and players about how games are made. The channel’s final video went up today, and Sakurai capped it off with two surprise announcements.
The first unexpected reveal was that the content for his channel was almost all created at the start. The Sakurai that many fans thought they were seeing in each new video was actually from the past, as the videos were shot years ago. That Christopher Nolan-esque twist kicked off a final video for the channel dedicated to how it was made and what the famed game director plans to do now. Not surprisingly, it includes going back to making them.
Sakurai’s second reveal was that he had been pitching a new project back when the channel first started. The time jump means that, assuming the pitch got greenlit, the director’s new game might be ready for an official announcement not too far in the future. Whether it’s a game in the mold of Smash Bros. or something completely different, and whether it’s for the Switch 2 or another platform entirely, remains to be seen.
“I received a request to write a game proposal, which I finished at lightning speed,” he said in the final video. “I’m sorry I can’t share more about this project, but assuming we’re able to get it made, it should be announced sooner or later.”
Elsewhere in the video, Sakurai shared a detailed look at how he organizes his day, plans out his official work and side hustles, and even when he goes to bed and how much sleep he gets (only about six hours on average). He also included some interesting stats about production costs and channel milestones. Sakurai estimated it cost about $600,000 to get all of the channel’s content edited and translated, as well as pay licensing fees for certain footage and crossover episodes with other companies. Had he billed himself for all of his own work and time scripting everything, the costs would have been even higher. But Sakurai confirmed it was all in service of an educational channel that he didn’t make any money from.
“It really was a silly decision,” he said. “However, and I truly mean this, I consider this an investment toward a brighter future for games.” He continued, “The world is constantly seeing new game releases. Lots of people are doing their best out there. Rather than add one more title to that deluge, I thought the channel might give all games a little quality boost and I hope from the bottom of my heart that I’ve contributed at least a bit of wind to the industry sails.”
In total, Sakurai released 260 videos, over 19 hours of content, with over 80 million views across it all, totaling 498 years of watch time. His Japanese and English language channels have over a million subscribers combined. Unfortunately, he also points out that given the “volatility” of the YouTube algorithm, there’s no telling when his videos will stop getting recommended and fade into the content background radiation of the rest of the platform. For now though, it sounds like the Smash Bros. icon will have more to share about his future game projects soon.