The coronavirus continues its dastardly work to sow discord in the gaming industry. Now it seems like Super Smash Bros Ultimate may be the latest casualty of the virus, if a leak is to be believed.
According to Ryokutya2089, Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai writes about the coronavirus in an upcoming Famitsu column. The section of the column that's been leaked is entirely in Japanese, of course, but Twitter user PushDustIn comes to the rescue with a translation. PushDustIn says that Sakurai has put on hold plans to present information about a new fighter or new fighters to publishers as a result of the coronavirus.
Were someone at Sakurai's office to contract coronavirus, the entire office would be shut down and development would be put on hold, according to the leaked column. There's still a chance that Nintendo will announce the new fighters but that development time will increase. That would mean that we'd know who the new characters would be, but they wouldn't be released for a good while after the announcement. Sakurai goes on to say that COVID-19 will have a huge impact on the gaming industry, and a lot of upcoming games could be affected.
PushDustIn reminds us that Japanese doesn't have plurals as English does. This means Sakurai could be referring to a single fighter in his column or he could be referring to all upcoming fighters. It's also worth bearing in mind that this is only a section of the full column, so we could be missing context, and that the final translation of Sakurai's comments could be different to PushDustIn's interpretation. Time will tell whether the coronavirus has truly delayed upcoming Super Smash Bros Ultimate. In the meantime, you can check out TechRaptor's ongoing coverage of gaming events either canceled or delayed due to the virus.
How do you feel about Sakurai's comments? Were you looking forward to new Super Smash Bros Ultimate announcements? Let us know in the comments below!
