Sakurai Looking to Improve Online Smash Bros Battles

The father of all things Super Smash Bros, Masahiuro Sakurai, recently answered a fan's question on online play in the latest issue of Famitsu Magazine in Japan.

The letter written in by a fan detailed how online battles in Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii became uninteresting due to players waiting in defense or not using items. Items off, Final Destination, you know the drill, folks!

Sakurai admitted that these sorts of battles weren't what he or the team envisaged when working on the Wii game. "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," he replied.

Online is focus that Sakurai and his team are investing into with the Wii U sequel as "a lot more is possible", and he wants to deal with these sorts of battles in the next game - he wants online competition to become more fun.

"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."

It seems that the next installment will have better considerations for match-ups and potentially learn from Nintendo's own experiments with other franchises like Mario Kart 7.

What are your thoughts on online play in Super Smash Bros? How should Nintendo tackle this in the upcoming Wii U and 3DS games?