New Smash Bros. still miles away

Excited for more Smash Bros? Time to calm down down a little. The new project, planned for both Wii U and 3DS, is still a long way from release.

That's according to series creator Masahiro Sakurai, who told Famitsu (translated by 1UP) that his team has so far made "no plans whatsoever" for the games.

"We've got two new games out in the open when there's no extra time to work with them at all. It makes me cringe, and I'm not sure it's the smartest thing to make gamers wait for several years," Sakurai admitted. "But the early announcement was made chiefly in order to attract new team members."

New Smash Bros. development won't start until current 3DS project, Kid Icarus: Uprising, is out the door this Christmas.

Sakurai must then staff up his Project Sora studio for the dual Smash Bros. development, though doing it quickly won't be easy. "The hardest part about game development is the burdens it places upon me," he said. "With previous projects I had a game design document in place before forming a team, but with this I don't have the time for that."

"I won't be able to look at every aspect of the game and balance out all the characters by myself this time. I'm trying to think about how this is going to work out, but probably I'll have to discuss it with my future development team. The future of this project really depends on the people I can get involved with it."

Why take on two systems at once? Sakurai decided only choosing one would limit the franchise.

"If we went solely for the Wii U, the HD graphics would really bump up the visual effects, but then we'd be stuck in another arms race," he explained. "If we made this game another extension over previous one, we'd have to cut out the new things we could possibly do on the 3DS hardware and compete with ourselves again over the size of the character roster and the amount of gameplay we can put it."

"It wouldn't be a fruitful competition, but doing something completely new would be difficult for many reasons, not least of which that the gamers may not be satisfied with it. That's why we decided to think about ways to link the personal connection one has with his portable system to the gather-around-and-play aspect of console systems."

Nintendo announced the upcoming Smash Bros. games at this year's E3.

"We really shouldn't have announced it for the general public at this timing", Sakurai previously tweeted.