User:Greshthegreat/Super Smash Bros. (2018)

Super Smash Bros. (2018) is an upcoming fighting game developed by Bandai Namco and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is set to release in 2018. Development on the game began in 2017, and was officially announced during the March 2018 Nintendo Direct.

Playable Characters
Only four characters to be in the game have been announced at this time. They are Splatoon Inkling Boy and Inkling Girl (who are new to the series), Mario and Link (in Breath of the Wild attire).

Development
In April 2014, Bandai Namco Entertainment posted a recruitment advertisement on a Japanese career job opportunity website. The recruitment page consisted of a listing for programmers for Smash Bros. 6, which was expected to be released in 2015 for both the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The page noted there were 120 game developers working on the project at the time, and that Bandai Namco expected that number to increase to 200. However, shortly after its publication, the page was taken down. In a January 2015 column in Weekly Famitsu, Sakurai alluded to the possibility of retirement, expressing doubt that he would be able to continue making games if his career continued to be as stressful as it was. In December 2015, Sakurai once again stated that he was not sure if there would be another game in the Smash Bros. series.

On March 8, 2018, a Super Smash Bros. game for the Nintendo Switch was announced during a Nintendo Direct, in which Inkling characters from Splatoon appeared, suggesting that they will be new characters in the game. Sakurai later confirmed that he had worked on the game "in silence, day after day." On March 22, 2018, Nintendo announced that they would host another Super Smash Bros. Invitational tournament, in which a selected group of players will get to play the game for the first time and compete in a series of matches before a winner is chosen. The tournament will take place alongside the Splatoon 2 World Championship at E3 2018 and will be held on June 11–12. Both events are scheduled to be live streamed on Nintendo's official YouTube and Twitch.tv channels.