TKO Creations

To say that Nintendo has had a unique level of ire for the competitive community for the Super Smash Bros. series would be kinda like saying the Hatfields and McCoys had some disagreements about how their neighborhood should be managed.

Nintendo hasn’t had much better than a thinly veiled animosity towards the small if ardently committed group that seek to play those titles at the highest level of skill, and there are a lot of theories as to why.

Some would argue that the one time Nintendo earnestly tried to have a partnership with the community, it turned out said community was a haven of deviants and deplorables with such a literal and metaphorical stench that Nintendo immediately withdrew and decided to never do that again.

Others would argue that Nintendo’s notoriously ruthless hand towards anyone who doesn’t wish to hew entirely towards their demands on how people should enjoy their games are the primary reason, as the competitive community is notorious for a very particular and static ruleset (sometimes to the degree of modding the base game) for their tournaments.

While neither of those are strictly “wrong,” and assuredly contribute to the amity between the company and its community, I’d like to posit a slightly different primary reason for the aggressive distaste. One that can be found in this chart.

There are a few things to note in this chart that with proper context might clarify what I mean.

For example, Street Fighter 2 (arguably the most recognizable fighting game in history) launched in 1992, and has (through various remakes and iterations) reached roughly 23 million sales. Smash Bros. Ultimate eclipsed that by a considerable margin launching 26 years later.

The third highest selling fighting game of all time launched exclusively on a console widely considered to be one of the biggest failures in the history of game consoles and a handheld device. Even taking the Wii U sales alone still puts that iteration of Smash above Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (which is largely considered to be the pinnacle of that series if you listen to its competitive community).

In fact, if you were to listen to the Smash Community, their favorite title (that has a sub-community ardently insistent on playing it to the exclusion of anything else) has sold roughly half of what that community largely considers its worst iteration.

The point I’m trying to make here is that what a competitive fighting game community thinks is the best rarely matches with what the general public thinks is best. That disconnect lies at the heart of Nintendo’s animosity.

See, people love to watch high level, skilled play. It’s why things like the Capcom Cup and EVO tournaments are a thing. People are less inclined to buy and play games with a high skill threshold. In fact, watching high-level play tends to discourage John and Jane Q. Public from buying a title. Most publishers know this, which is also why things like the Capcom Cup and EVO tournaments are a thing. If they can’t make their money selling to casual players, they can at least get a cut of the astonishingly high number of people willing to watch the games being played.

It’s why Netherrealm has been including “story modes” in their games with AI opponents that are uh… extremely low skill to put it nicely. The hope on their end is that enough people will find that (and other assorted casual friendlier game modes) worth the $60 or $70 rather than getting their asses handed to them routinely by people who have invested thousands of hours into mastering the proper frame counts and optimal animation cancels.

It’s why you see the degree of investment in server side matchmaking in a lot of titles nowadays. For those who wade into the online competition, publishers and developers are trying to avoid as many people as possible from bouncing off their titles within a hour, soured by the experience of getting railroaded over and over.

While Masahiro Sakurai and his team definitely made sure that the Smash series had a robust set of fighting game mechanics under the hood, that is absolutely not how the publishers at Nintendo want the general public to view that series, and have increasingly found the grassroots competitive community that has doggedly clung to relevance as an annoyance at best, and sabotaging at worst.

That disconnect between competitive high level play and the casual market is why Nintendo really wants people to consider the Smash franchise as a fun, quirky party game with some of gaming history’s most recognizable characters rather than a fighting game.

Because the game sales are found in the general, casual public, not the high-skill level quasi-to-total professionals that you see on Twitch streams (and occasionally ESPN 3), and that is what Nintendo cares about over anything else.

This entry was posted on October 27, 2023 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Grumblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.