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Super Smash Bros. is Done With New CharactersPlease read the article first. That's a pretty sensationalist headline. Several sites are reporting the same thing.
Series creator Masahiro Sakurai is cautious about continuing to expand the already massive list of characters. "It isn't a matter of 'if the next game has 50 characters, that'll be enough,'" Sakurai said in an interview with Nintendo Power. "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."
I highly doubt he means "no new characters" or "fewer characters." Sounds more like he's talking more about changing up the gameplay which, unless I'm mistaken, is pretty consistent with what he's been saying all along. I could see him cutting the "clones" and merging them into one character because people keep complaining about that so the total number of new characters is the roughly the same even if they introduce completely new characters. For example, even though Fox, Falco and Wolf play differently, they get merged into 1 character and become costumes.
I just find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be any new characters when Nintendo is known for their rich history of unique characters. Sakurai talks about large casts and balance, but look at who they have working on the game. Tekken 6 had 43 chracters. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 apparently had over 50. From what I've read, the Tekken series is regarded as one of the most balanced fighting series. I'm not saying this means we should expect like 30 new characters, all balanced. Rather, we should not expect extremes. When putting what we know in context, expect the middle ground. It's silly to think there won't be any new characters. Sakurai just keeps driving home the idea that the focus of these new Smash Bros. games is placed on refining and evolving the gameplay and not simply on how many things can be stuffed into the game. I like that approach. I just find these "news" stories with their ridiculous headlines to be dubious at best.