Sakurai: Smash Bros. Has No Future if Kept Strictly Competitive

Super Smash Bros. producer Masahiro Sakurai recently talked about competitive play and patches.

In an interview, Sakurai noted how ongoing patches is still undecided, but there is a small team that collects research on character stats and battles. If there was an "extremely large problem, it could happen" is the approach he's taking at the moment.

Speaking about competitive play, Sakurai feels that there are other "competitive fighting games that are more suited to that," and if "you play Smash Brothers seriously as a competitive game, the game itself has no future."

By that he means, if the next game is only geared towards competitive players, then there'll be no future in the series as "beginners would no longer be able to play the game."

When the game becomes more like a sport, a tool that more strictly rewards the player with more skill, the game tapers off more, like a mountain. Just like how a mountain tapers off into its peak, that area becomes more and more narrow.

There are lots of games like that out there. If we downgraded* the game to make it more spectator friendly, that would be a bad thing. Smash needs to be a game that new players can play. Some level of technical skill may be necessary, but if just try and can move your character around a bit, that's the important bit. We do show the results of the battle, but everyone just mashes A, right? To move on, to keep going. Making people feel this way is important.

What do you think of Sakurai's stance towards competitive play?