Nintendo announced at E3 that they would be working on a new installment of the Super Smash Bros. franchise for Wii U and 3DS. A recent update from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed that they will be teaming up with Namco Bandai for the project.
Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai will head the project and will be working alongside Namco Bandai producer Masaya Kobayashi and Yoshito Higuchi (director of Tales of Vesperia) to oversee the fourth installment of the Super Smash Bros. series. Tetsuya Akatsuka, sound and art director of the Soul Calibur franchise, will also be involved in the development.
Though the Super Smash Bros. franchise has made its dent in the fighting game category, Nintendo’s in for a little competition this time around. Earlier this year, the Sony team revealed that a Smash Bros-type fighting game featuring a multitude of PlayStation characters is in the works. The game will be called PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. We all know Namco Bandai is famed for a number of commercially successful fighting games like Tekken, Soul Calibur, Dragon Ball Z and the Naruto series, so we anticipate that their contribution to the next Super Smash Bros. title will turn out well.
For now, we just have to hang tight and tune in to more updates on which Namco characters they’re going to throw in or if they’re going to include any of them at all.