Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of both Kirby and the Super Smash Bros. franchise, has been working on video games for a very long time. He created Kirby at the age of 19, and directed his first game, Kirby's Dream Land, to completion in 1992. Since then, Sakurai has split from Nintendo to run his own independent company, Sora Ltd, but has continued working with Nintendo. With his current project, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, is in its third year of post-launch development, it's unsurprising to hear that retirement is a frequent topic of discussion for Sakurai.
Sakurai was recently interviewed by Bandai Namco's Katsuhiro Harada, the director of the Tekken franchise. In a newly released portion of the interview, Sakurai openly discussed his views on retirement, sharing an especially deep and heartfelt thought process on the matter. Before any Sakurai fans stress themselves out, Sakurai says he has no intention of retiring, but admits that it's possible he could retire at any time if there's "no demand" for his art.
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The context for his response starts with Sakurai explaining that his generation believes in contributing to society even after a typical retirement age of 60. In other words, "If you can still do what you're good at and if there's demand, you can just do it." Sakurai explains that what he does, creating video games and leading teams of developers, is unique and "art." He believes that there will always be demand for it, but admits that it's possible that eventually "nobody likes your art" and at that point, it'd be worth thinking about what comes next.
That doesn't mean that Sakurai hasn't considered leaving game development, however. He explains that "making games is really tough" and that over the years he has thought about quitting countless times. That even if you "work really hard" on a project you care about, things can get wrong or fans can pick on you. He also acknowledges that the intensity of game development could mean "cutting your own life short." These are things that Sakurai admits to thinking about, particularly in relation to retirement.
However, Sakurai takes a surprising shift and says that it's because of this that "you have to fight and survive" in game development, and as a result he doesn't think he "can choose when [he'll] retire." Sakurai explains that thinks he should work as long as he can. Eventually, it's possible that his "heart gets broken" and he could quit, but so long as there's demand for his art he "can keep doing it forever." Suffice to say, Sakurai has a very profound approach to game development and his future.
It's safe to assume that in the near future Sakurai has no plans to retire from game development. In fact, he basically says that he wants to keep making games for the rest of his life. Super Smash Bros. UItimate development is coming to a close, so who knows what that means for Sakurai's next project. Of course, there's always the possibility that there's no demand for Sora Ltd's work and Sakurai follows through by retiring, too.
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