Smash Bros: Sakurai wants to make online play more fun than Brawl

Smash Bros maestro Masahiuro Sakurai has penned another Famitsu column this week, in which he stressed his desire for the next game to feature better online play. His aim is to make it more fun than Brawl.

ONM reports that Sakurai's column topic came in response to an angry fan letter. The disgruntled gamer complained that players online would often stand around waiting for their opponent to make the first move, and that people rarely used items, among other things.

Sakurai replied, "The idea of Brawl's 'carefree brawling' motto was to get rid of as many restraints as possible and allow people to choose whatever play approach they liked.

"I'd like people to take some freer approaches with their gameplay, but the sort of battle style you describe in your letter is not interesting or fun. That's why I'll probably be thinking of a way to deal with that in the next game. We've learned a lot about net play since Brawl was released, after all, so a lot more is possible.

"I suppose the fact that we've still got no-fee online battles available in a game that was released five years ago is another cause of the problem. It would have been nice if we could have revised the game rules as appropriate, but with the system we had, that wasn't possible."

Sakurai is an out-spoken developer, and recently called on studios to tell better stories. Check out why here.