According to Masahiro Sakurai, in the November 2014 issue of GameInformer, the reason why Super Smash Bros. was released on two different consoles was because he was a “freelance game designer,” and that having a unique version of the game makes it fun.

"The first reason is that I think both portables and home consoles have their own traits that make them fun. I've gone into that in previous interviews, so I'll omit the details here.

One big reason for this approach is because I'm a freelance game designer ... I'm always going to be the center of any Smash Bros. project, but since I don't have my own personal studio, the staff changes in and out with each project. Changing development studios like this also means that you can't build out from the know-how and in-house assets you've accumulated over time.

As a development environment, it's different from a publisher that can work on fighting games, shooters, and open-world titles all at once. For us, even if things look the same, it's all completely different, completely built from scratch. If we started with a console project then moved on to the portable platform, once one team finished up their work, we'd have to wait and hand everything over to another team."