The creator of Super Smash Bros. may be permanently burned out on the series. In an interview in the latest issue of Game Informer (available only in print or with a digital subscription) director Masahiro Sakurai said that while he "can't positively declare there won't be [more Smash Bros. games in the future]... as for myself, I don't think there will be."

With the recent release of sister Smash Bros. games for the Wii U and 3DS, Sakurai says the team has packed in so many features that "in terms of scope, and in terms of sheer number of characters, we went beyond our limits long ago. And yet, if we cut the number of fighters or modes in a future game, I'm sure there would be complaints."

Development on the latest games was extremely arduous, Sakurai told Game Informer. "It felt like, after we managed to stagger past one goal we had for ourselves, there was another goal further away we then had to sprint for... just test-playing all this stuff took a pretty hefty chunk of time," he said. By all accounts, Sakurai is an extremely hands-on director who actually hurt his arm quite badly through overwork during the Smash Bros. development process.

While Sakurai said he has a "personal desire to keep giving gamers as much as I can... I feel like we've arrived at a very difficult place."

But that doesn't mean the series has definitely hit a hard stopping point. "One thing I can say, however, is that I hope people don't think that Smash Bros. has come to its natural conclusion as a matter of course."

This isn't the first time Sakurai has vowed to stop working on the Smash Bros. series, either. "With both Melee and Brawl, I made those games with the thought that there wouldn't be any more sequels. Thus, I really can't deny the chance for another," he said.

Sakurai isn't alone in breaking a promise to cease work a game franchise. Metal Gear Solid director Hideo Kojima has said that he intended for every game since Metal Gear Solid 2 to be the last one he worked on in the series but that he was "forced to come back and work on it" for various reasons. Keita Takahashi worked on the sequel to Katamari Damacy only under protest and the threat that publisher Namco would make a sequel without him if he refused; when Takahashi left the company, that's just what Namco did.

While we sympathize with Sakurai's feeling of burnout after nearly four years of work on the latest Smash Bros. games, we hope he's able to happily return to the series after getting some well-deserved rest... and maybe some time making a new Kid Icarus, too?