Super Smash Bros and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai has revealed that he put nearly $600,000 into his YouTube channel, and hasn't seen a penny in return.
In his final video, uploaded to the channel earlier today, Sakurai announced that he'd actually filmed almost all of his 260 releases more than two years ago, and had spent much of the time since working on a new game. The final video doesn't dwell on that new title, however, instead explaining the lengths that Sakurai went to to bring his video project to life.
Explaining that much of the content was written and originally filmed in a six-month window between projects in 2022, Sakurai explained that for the past two years, he'd been working closely with a video editing firm, as well as a team of translators, to allow for his consistent uploads. Those two expenses, as well as a few extra costs, came to a total of 90 million yen. While he acknowledges that the weakness of the yen currently makes that figure seem bigger than it is, it still amounts to a little under $600,000 with modern conversion rates.
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Sakurai also explains that the figure could easily be significantly higher, as it doesn't take into account all the time he spent writing scripts, recording footage, and editing drafts. If you assigned a figure to that work by outsourcing it, he suggests it "would surely cause your production costs to skyrocket."
But for all that output, Sakurai hasn't seen a single yen back from his project, because the entire thing isn't monetized. It's hard to get a true sense of how much Sakurai could have made from the videos, but having garnered 80 million views across his Japanese and English language channels, an average YouTube return of $6 per 1,000 views suggests he'd have made back a little under $500,000. With a final video (and any future views) adding to that total, there's a chance Sakurai could have broken even on the project eventually.
He does joke, twice, that the decision not to monetise the channels was a "silly" one, but he has his reasons for making that decision. "However, and I truly mean this," he says, "I consider this an investment toward a brighter future for games," outlining his hopes that players will use his archive of videos to gain a greater appreciation for game design, and developers will use it as inspiration if they're stuck. "The jury is still out for now," he admits, "but for the money I put into it, I'd say the channel turned out well enough."
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