Given how many Pokémon we have, I somehow doubt that there’s any difficulty in negotiations.
Other than Square allegedly wanting Cloud to be DLC again (and I never got a confirm on that) I've never seen anything indicating that the third parties were a licensing nightmare.
Konami doesn't come back for a game, but then brings in Snake and a smorgasbord of Castlevania content including two playable characters, three dozen songs, a stage and a boss battle.
SNK probably salivated at the chance of getting Terry in the biggest game he's ever been in; familiarizing the Smash audience with King of Fighters is going to pay off for them.
Phil Spencer talked about putting Banjo in Smash last game, and finally realized that even without Sakurai's input.
Sega has three unique characters in Smash and they've been tight with Nintendo for almost two decades now.
All the 'i's have to be dotted and the 't's crossed. Everyone still needs to be paid.
It may be that getting most of the various companies to approve of one of their characters being in the game is not that difficult. But then the developers have to work with various brand managers, licensing directors, and legal teams to actually make it happen. When you're doing that across a dozen different brand teams...it adds up.
This may come as a shock, but all companies care more about their bottom line than they do about the prestige of another company's product.
It's basically impossible to get half a dozen friends to agree on pizza toppings. Now make it half a dozen competing corporations to agree on how they should be compensated for renting out their intellectual property to another, separate competing corporation.
I do wonder what the next Smash game could possibly do to follow up Ultimate.
If the next game is inevitably going to be smaller... why would people buy it? It'd need to have some significant change to the gameplay to compensate for the reductions, and I'm not sure how they could do that without completely abandoning how Smash plays.
My preferred solution is that they increase the development time of the next game so it logically can be bigger and better than Ultimate, and outsource the Smash Bros. concept to another team in the interim so they can make some kind of spinoff-game to tide the fans/shareholders over. Maybe a full platforming adventure like SSE but in Ultimate's engine, or a 3D fighter with a smaller roster, or even an RPG adventure.
Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Jun 3rd 2020 at 2:53:05 PM
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!Some other games thrive on other type of guests fighters. Mortal Kombat tends to get guests from things like films or comics that are usually impossible to happen in Smash (Videogames only, that's about the only hard rule)
I personally want to see a crossover fighting game between game companies. The big wet dream of mine would be Capcom vs Nintendo. MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Uni catA smaller game would still have new characters, stages, items (including Assist Trophies and Poké Balls), and music.
In fact, it may have a higher percentage of newer stuff compared to Ultimate, as a result of having to scale down.
Just because it's smaller doesn't automatically make it inferior. It doesn't even have to be that much smaller.
I think it all depends on how they approach the making of the next Smash game. Like, let's take Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 as an example. It has a really huge roster… but at the same time, majority of the roster is made up of characters who already has sprites made for them from previous Capcom fighting games with only like eight new characters with new assets (and that is accounting Servbot, who is just split off from Tron Bonne's assets). There wasn't any real way for the next MvC game to match the roster numbers from the get-go.
Obviously the wouldn't be a 2D->2D leap, but if Sakurai or whomever decides that the next Smash game would get a fresh start, then good for them.
Only sometimes postsI honestly feel like this is the last Super Smash Bros fighting game, and the next Super ___ ____ will be a kart racing game.
The sad, REAL American dichotomySmash will probably never have a roster the size of Ultimate again in our lifetimes, but I don't think any new Smash game will ever have a launch day roster of <50 characters.
The highlight of Smash games, moving forward, will likely be in their alternate game modes. They'll probably go for more extravagant story/adventure modes or party game-type modes in order to sell people on buying a game that will undoubtedly lack a lot of fan favorites that Ultimate had. The other possible thing that a new Smash could do better than Ultimate is tighten up the gameplay and make it more conducive to high-level play both locally and online - essentially, something closer to Melee, but intentionally this time - but I think we'd be better off holding our breaths for a 500-character Smash Ultimate 2.
One possible route I can see them taking is eventually dropping the fighting game element of the series and using the Super Smash Bros. brand for more casual party games or sports games, ala the Mario Party and sports spinoffs. They can fit a lot more characters in that way, since animations and balancing would be a lot less complex, and it would get Nintendo out of the esports scene that they still seem really uncomfortable with.
That would probably make a lot of people unhappy, but I think we've already seen the pinnacles of loads-of-characters Smash Bros and competitively-focused Smash Bros, so maybe a completely different direction wouldn't be a bad thing. I'd personally love to see a Super Smash Bros RPG.
I have no problem with Mario Kart becoming a Smash Bros type game, but I don't see why they'd need or want to end Smash itself. And as for why people would buy 6 if it doesn't have everything from Ultimate, just have different content. It wouldn't take that many new fighters to get people interested.
The Scrappy of the Trope Pantheon, God of Thumps
Only way to surpass Smash ultimate is to keep rereleasing it. But would we all get tired of the same game over and over again?
I would like Nintendo to take the Smash IP in a whole new direction eventually as the only way to appease people without looking like a downgrade (looking at you Sword and Shield). Super Smash Kart sounds ridiculous yet something I’m sure Sakurai would have cocked up if he knew he couldnt top Ultimate.
Pantheon server for all who click here. Lost too much money and time, this coaster ain’t stopping.
Though there would certainly be audience overlap, the Smash fandom isn’t just in it for the crossover aspect, but also the fighting game. Inkling is much less unique as a Mario Kart character than as a Smash fighter.
The Scrappy of the Trope Pantheon, God of Thumps
Nintendo treats Smash bros as a party game/fighting game hybrid, so we can onl assume any smash game must have
- Local and online multiplayer
- Lots of characters from both Nintendo and maybe a gust character here
- Representing various franchsies through its content
I don't think rereleasing it avoids any of the licensing issues that make Sakurai say that there won't be another game like this again anyway. They can't just keep releasing games called "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for [Whatever System]" to get around the fact that they only licensed the characters for one game.
They will lose a large chunk of their audience if they do that.
Edited by BadWolf21 on Jun 3rd 2020 at 5:39:40 AM
For an example, a few weeks ago Mortal Kombat 9 was pulled from Steam (if if recall), probably having to do with the rights of Freddy Krueger expiring.
I doubt that would happen with Smash given that it's a first party title but this is to give some context to how a licensed character might screw you over in the long run
Uni cat
The Scrappy of the Trope Pantheon, God of Thumps
Well, Freddy Kruger is a film franchise first, so that makes the rights thing more dire,
I don't think rights expiring could happen to physical releases.
Pantheon server for all who click here. Lost too much money and time, this coaster ain’t stopping.If a character license expires, that just means they can't distribute the game with that character anymore.
I don't know the details of their license to use Cloud, but let's pretend for the sake of example that the contract says they can use Cloud in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for 2 years from launch day. That would mean that by the end of this year, Nintendo as a publisher would have to renew the contract with Square. If they don't, then Nintendo would be unable to distribute any further copies of the game after the contract expires (unless they remove Cloud from versions of the game distributed in the future, which in most cases is considered to be more trouble than it's worth).
They're not going to recall physical copies that have been sold, and they're not going to disable copies of the game that have been downloaded (though their EULA probably says they technically have the right to, if it's anything like other companies' EULAs). They would just stop shipping physical copies of the game and pull the game from their digital store.
EDIT: I believe they also would not be able to release any further patches on the game, since that would count as distributing a new version of the game, but don't hold me to that.
Edited by MileRun on Jun 3rd 2020 at 4:53:11 AM

I even doubt they could get some of the first party to return. Some have to be licensed to developers like HAL Laboratories or Monolith Soft for instance. Then there is the nonsense that is Pokemon having three right holders.
If the first party is enough trouble, would they really want to deal with some of the third party ones? Unless they want to go for Ultimate part 2, i don't think so.
Uni cat