Super Smash Bros. (Wii U / 3DS): Masahiro Sakurai comments about DLC (Famitsu)
In the latest issue Famitsu, Masahiro Sakurai had its usual bi-weekly column.
This week, he talked mainly about the downloadable content for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. But first, he wanted to thank players for their incredible support: after all, in the User’s Eye section of the magazine, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS was the highest rated game in 2014 (with an average of 9.58). He admits that he had never seen such a high score before.
He then reminds players that developing a new Super Smash Bros. game is an incredibly hard process, but it’s also the best way to satisfy the most players worldwide. It’s for this very reason that Lucas will also be joining the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U / Nintendo 3DS roster in June, and that Mewtwo won’t be the only DLC character.
Masahiro Sakurai then talks about all the bad practices when it comes to DLC, like publishers cutting content and features from games in order to sell them as paid DLC. He himself believe than a game should be 100% complete when it comes out, and he’d be pretty annoyed if a game he bought was split in bits to be sold as DLC.
He explains that if such DLC is released so soon after release, it’s because it’s the easiest way to make money. After all, if you wait too long, players will most likely have moved on to another game by the time you release your DLC, so you have to move quick… and this includes games who sell well on long periods of time.
In fact, Sakurai and his team coul have done just that with Super Smash Bros. After all, even if they had cut some stages or characters, the game would have still been packed with content. It would also have allowed them to make money, which is quite interesting when development costs just keep on rising, while the price of games more or less stays the same.
But in the end, all the DLC for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS was made after the game launched. Of course, this has a price, and the characters aren’t exactly cheap. However, Masahiro Sakurai still think it’s a great deal, even if it was Nintendo that ultimately fixed the price of the DLC.
About Mewtwo: they originally planned to distribute it only to players who registered both games, but in the end, they decided to sell it separately. After all, in families with several children, only one of them would have been able to play with Mewtwo on their Nintendo 3DS, which would have been rather troublesome.
Another reason they decided to add more characters as DLC is because part of the fun with a Super Smash Bros. game is to try and guess which character will be added next. With DLC, Nintendo is able to keep players interested the game, which is a great thing according to Masahiro Sakurai.
He then explains that the development team has shrunk in size, but he’s still as excited as ever to work on the game. Since they’re producing different types of content, the planning for one may coincide with the development, balancing, and finalization of several others. As you can imagine, things can get pretty overwhelming, especially with the Software updates, the new online feature and game modes the team is also working on.
Finally, Masahiro Sakurai reminds players that creating a new fighter is quite a lot of work, so they won’t be able to make too many of those. Also, he would love to finally be able to finish his work on the game and finally take some (well-deserved!) rest.
Here’s a scan from Famitsu magazine:
Source: Famitsu
Translation: Source Gaming
