Masahiro Sakurai Launches Gaming YouTube Channel

Industry legend and the genius behind Kirby and Smash Bros., Masahiro Sakurai, has just launched his YouTube channel, which he calls, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games. The purpose of the channel, according to his introductory video, is to make gaming and game design more fun and accessible to both the casual and the pro. 

Sakurai San rather humbly stated that he doesn't expect the channel to have much of an impact considering how niche it is, but the subscriber count, which currently sits at 236k, tells a different story. Furthermore, Sakurai actually created two channels, one with purely Japanese content and the other with English content. This way, the videos are accessible to everyone. The Japanese channel has 208k subscribers, which means that Sakurai could boast of a combined subscriber count of almost half a million, and considering he just launched the channel within the last 24 hours, that is pretty remarkable. 

There are currently four videos on the channel all of which are less than 10 minutes. This is deliberate as Sakurai San stated in his inaugural offering that he would like to keep the content short and sweet while also keeping it fun. He added that he would cover both basic stuff and more advanced things regarding game design. He warned that viewers should not expect granular explanations on certain things considering how trade secrets of companies are still to be protected. He also pointed out that he would not be streaming games and will more often stick to the topic of game design.

This YouTube channel is a personal project which Sakurai San said he would be funding from his pocket but that he also has the permission of Nintendo to showcase some things that the general public normally wouldn't be privy too. He also stated that he would do his best to be respectful of other people's IPs and would mostly talk about classic games as those are less likely to cause a problem with copyright holders.

Interestingly, he has already released a video talking about the importance of 'stops' at important moments in games. This can easily be seen in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate when a character lands a heavy attack. 

It doesn't seem that Masahiro Sakurai has a defined release schedule, but we can expect a fairly regular upload schedule.