Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby and director of the Smash Bros series, recently shared that he once decided to remove Dolby Surround from a game to eliminate extra waiting time for players.
During a livestream marking the 10th anniversary of the Arcade Archives series by Hamster Corporation, Sakurai advised that the waiting time between selecting and starting a game should be minimized.
He emphasized the need for players to swiftly transition between games, similar to the arcade experience. To illustrate his point, Sakurai disclosed that Kirby Air Ride was initially planned to have Dolby Surround audio, but he opted to forgo it as displaying the Dolby logo would have caused additional waiting time. He expressed remorse for inconveniencing players and stressed the significance of optimizing user experience by reducing even a single second of wait time.
