At the start of the year, Switch fans got a shock when Nintendo announced the development of Metroid Prime 4 had been entirely restarted. This followed later on in the year with the delay of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

With this in mind, it’s nice when we do get regular updates from developers about how their upcoming projects are going. In this case, the latest one is about the anticipated Switch exclusive, Bayonetta 3. A Twitter user reached out to PlatinumGames’ Hideki Kamiya recently and asked when fans could expect to hear more. Kamiya responded with the following line: “Development is going really well. There you go” (translation by Nintendo Everything).

Sure, it’s not much, but after all of the other delays and setbacks this year, it’s nice to know Bayonetta 3 is still on track, especially after it wasn’t shown at this year’s E3.

Are you looking forward to the third chapter in this series? Leave a comment down below.

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: San Diego, CA

PlayStation’s Visual Arts Services Group (VASG) provides world-class content, development and services to Worldwide Studios. Our team is always at the cutting edge of technology and partners with the industry’s best minds and first-party studios.

We are looking for a Rigging Supervisor to join our sunny San Diego, CA development team. This role requires expert Maya rigging/scripting skills as well as strong knowledge of anatomy and realistic deformation to deliver the industry-leading quality PlayStation’s award-winning lineup is known for. This hands-on position will also require leadership and communication skills to ensure output is efficiently executed, timely, and meet the technical/animation requirements.

Role responsibilities

• Set up and maintain character (humans & animals) rigs and systems
• Work with art team to develop models that meets technical requirements
• Work with animation team to create artist-friendly rigs that satisfy animation/gameplay needs
• Design and set up character dynamics (i.e. cloth, hair)
• Develop new techniques and processes to further advance quality/realism
• Collaborate with TDs in on-going facial and muscle simulation research
• Create tools to streamline workflow/pipelines for multiple projects.
• Work with team directors and production to identify/prioritize tasks
• Provide and maintain technical documentation
• Work with and mentor character riggers to provide clear direction and set expectations for aesthetic and technical requirements; instill best practices

Required Experience & Skills

• Expert knowledge of Maya, with minimum of 5 years of production experience in game or film/vfx fields.
• At least 1 year as a Lead or Supervisor on AAA
• In-depth knowledge of character/prop rigging technique and principles
• Strong understanding of figure and facial anatomy
• Python scripting
• Experience with adopting production pipelines and make improvements that respect guidelines and system requirements
• Strong troubleshooting skills and the ability to find pragmatic solutions
• Proven ability to be self-sufficient and take initiative to seek answers and address issues
• Effective communication skills

Bonus Skills

C++ experience (Maya API)

Familiarity in runtime performance efficiency and optimization

Sony is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All persons will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, legally protected physical or mental disability, covered veteran status, status in the U.S. uniformed services, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, genetic information or membership in any other legally protected category.

We strive to create an inclusive environment, empower employees and embrace diversity. We encourage everyone to respond.

We sincerely appreciate the time and effort you spent in contacting us and we thank you for your interest in PlayStation.

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

Hey game makers, hope you’re closing out the year in style! Today, Game Developers Conference organizers have confirmed that the popular GDC Pitch event will return next year as part of the GDC Play showcase of emerging and independent developers!

If you’ve never been, know that GDC Pitch is a very special event designed to help select participants practice their game-pitching skills with experienced professionals — as well as a live audience of GDC attendees!

It’s a fun and valuable experience for both presenters and spectators, since a great pitch can be the key that secures the future of your studio, or ensures your game has the resources to reach the players who will appreciate it most.

Interested in participating? Here’s how it works: Game developers who register to exhibit their game in GDC Play 2020 by Wednesday, February 12th may be selected to receive pitching advice and coaching, then pitch their game to an opinionated panel of investors and publishers in front of an audience.

(No pressure!)

All told, 10 selected teams will each be offered pitch prep and training, then get 5 minutes to pitch, followed by questions, advice, and feedback from the judges. The judges will declare a “Best Pitch” on each day, and award each a complimentary All Access pass to GDC 2021.

What is GDC Play, you might ask? It’s a special area at GDC (open Wednesday through Friday, March 18th through 20th) that showcases emerging and independent developers, with room to show off your game and meeting rooms to conduct business. It’s a great place to drum up interest in your game, and it’s still open to potential exhibitors (but it fills up quick) so register now!

As part of the ‘Best in Play’ awards program all GDC Play exhibitors will be judged on their in-development or complete games by a panel of veteran GDC organizers and Gamasutra editors. The top 8 will be named ‘Best in Play’ winners, and all 8 winners will receive 2 All Access Passes to the 2021 Game Developers Conference. In addition, special ‘Best in Play’ designations will be attached to the honorees’ GDC Play tables at GDC 2020, where their games will be playable to all GDC attendees.

For more details on GDC 2020 visit the show’s official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa Tech

From now until the end of 2019 we’ll be celebrating the coming year by looking back and republishing some of our finest features from the past twelve months, in addition to our regular output. This article first appeared on the site back in November. Enjoy!

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A few weeks ago while scrolling through Twitter, a particular video clip caught our eye. It showed Slipstream, a 1995 F1 arcade game from Capcom. Using Sega’s System 32 board, it was produced in very limited quantities for the Latin American market and never saw wide release.

As you can see from the tweet below, it’s a beautiful looking, colourful game with some nifty sprite scaling techniques, but at a time when 3D racers like Virtua Racing, Daytona USA and Ridge Racer were showing the potential of polygons, sprites – however cleverly scaled – were viewed as a backwards step and Slipstream was destined to be ignored. Looking back now, it looks remarkable and we’d love to take it for a spin on Switch or any other modern system.

So, how do we get our hands on it? With every game in history seemingly coming to Switch, surely there’s space for this beautiful-looking curio amongst all the mobile ports and 99 cent downloads. Unfortunately, if you’re not au fait with ROM hunting on the internet, you’re out of luck.

Cue angry gamers decrying Capcom and the vast back catalogue of games it’s hoarding while churning out REmake after RErelease. Capcom, Sega and the rest seem happy enough to pump out the old standards again and again – the Sonic the Hedgehogs, the Street Fighters – but ignore a trove of gaming treasures locked away in their vaults. Why won’t they let us play these games legally? Why won’t they take our money?

We’d be happy enough with a bare-bones ROM package for the right price. The Resident Evil Switch ports show us that companies like Capcom aren’t too precious about showcasing the games at their very best – good enough is invariably good enough. Dumping Slipstream into an emulator package and throwing it on eShop would be right up Capcom’s alley, no?

Unfortunately, gamers frequently ignore the business realities that accompany bringing any kind of software to market. “If a game is still out of print, it’s because its owner doesn’t know how to make it profitable,” says Frank Cifaldi, video game historian, preservationist and developer with Digital Eclipse, the studio behind retro revivals including the excellent Street Fighter 30th Anniversary, Mega Man Legacy and Disney Afternoon Collections as well as the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection. “Money’s always the issue. I can’t think of any situation where a game is out of print for any other reason. But money can mean more than just ‘we don’t know if we can recoup the development cost,’ there are a lot of hidden costs to consider.”

In addition to Quality Assurance, certification from the platform holder, ratings certification with various global bodies and other requirements, there are often licencing issues to consider and simply investigating the possibility of a potential release can present a sizeable barrier. “Researching whether a company still has the rights to a game can be a tremendous legal cost,” Cifaldi continues. “Or sometimes the rights to a game are split up. Let’s say a game’s composer is owed royalties every time you sell their game. If you’re the company that owns it, actually tracking that person down, renegotiating the rights, etc. is a cost. As would be actually doing the accounting work to pay that person, which is especially difficult if you’re a company that doesn’t already have that accounting machine in place.”

It’s this risk-averse environment that means we see the Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog repeatedly rereleased

It’s not unusual for publishers themselves to be hazy regarding exactly what rights they have retained or sold through the years, and these issues only get murkier as time goes by. Things are further complicated – often intentionally so – by companies who acquire IP in order to ‘sit on’ it with a view to taking legal action should a confused party green-light a project blindly assuming they have the rights tied up. In the process of writing this piece, we spoke to a senior member of staff at one major third-party publisher (who will remain anonymous) who was recently surprised to learn that it no longer owns the rights to republish one of its most famous games from the early ’90s, and that the original developer, when contacted, had sold the rights to another company for a tiny fee only a few months previously. As time passes, rights are sold and resold and old, paper-based contracts get lost, so even checking terms can be tricky, time-consuming and costly. Simply put, many publishers don’t even know what they own, and taking the time to find what they do own has a cost attached to it.

With profit margins on many ‘niche’ retro titles already extremely slim, the risk of having to fork out a licensing fee to a previously unknown rights holder or face potential litigation creates an atmosphere of risk to an already-questionable venture. No wonder so many games remain locked away; uncertainty makes such projects untenable from a business perspective.

And remember, this is before any development work can take place – this is preparation for a reheated ROM to be ‘lazily’ thrown on digital storefronts sans frills. It’s this risk-averse environment that means we see the Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog repeatedly rereleased – SEGA knows Sonic has the pop-culture cachet to sell on every platform, every generation. That affection is a huge part of the success of Sonic Mania, for example; a Kickstarter campaign from one of that game’s co-developers looked to tap into a similar vein of 16-bit nostalgia with a new IP and ran aground almost immediately. Would a retro release like Slipstream make enough to even cover the most basic costs of unearthing it?

In the case of Slipstream, there’s the additional issue that it features real-world brands. Whether Foster’s, Mobil and the other brands adorning the billboards were consulted at the time of release is immaterial now (they probably weren’t, given the standards of the time – Sega was famously sued by tobacco firm Philip Morris due to unauthorised Marlboro cigarette advertisements in Super Monaco GP); licences would need to be (re)negotiated or those assets removed – more work and, crucially, more money.

In order for developers to be able to go above-and-beyond and provide added value and modern features, further investment is necessary – financially, of course, but also by providing access to archival resources and not closing down potential outside avenues. “SNK was a really great partner,” says Cifaldi of the company’s willingness to engage with its past. “What we loved about them is that not only do they acknowledge past employees as having contributed to the company, they go as far as to talk to and even pay them. Yoshino-san [Kasatoshi Yoshino, SNK veteran] for example, is someone who worked at SNK in the ‘80s and hasn’t been there in a long time. SNK actually paid him as a consultant to work with us, and to scan a lot of his vintage material that you see in the game’s museum. It’s a rarity for game companies to do that, we were blown away by the level of respect they give to the people who actually built their legacy.”

If beloved classics have to fight tooth-and-nail to scrape a rerelease, what chance do unloved, average games have of seeing the light of day

Over the years, bankruptcies, acquisitions and name changes mean that SNK as an entity has fractured several times. The company as it is today had an interest in assembling and archiving its history, preserving its brand at the same time as documenting a prestigious past. The SNK 40th Anniversary Collection brings together a large number of games that were previously unavailable, and the company even coughed up for free post-release updates including more games. Not every title included is a classic, which is noteworthy; if beloved classics have to fight tooth-and-nail to scrape a rerelease, what chance do unloved, average games have of seeing the light of day apart from in these sorts of packages? Suddenly these collections become important archival documents themselves.

Of course, many would argue that most things are only a web search and a right-click away, and there’s a notion that the proliferation of ROMs online deters companies from doing the work to bring games back. Does the idea that Slipstream is probably already sitting on the hard drives of hardcore devotees discourage companies from releasing them in an official capacity? Cifaldi isn’t convinced. “I haven’t heard anything from the clients I’ve worked with that re-releasing an old game is hopeless because of ROM availability. If that were the case obviously companies like Hamster with its Arcade Archives could not possibly flourish.”

In a sense, emulation has already ‘preserved’ Slipsteam and anyone can dive into MAME, tinker on their PC and sample its delights for themselves. There is, though, a group of gamers either unable or unwilling to bother with that process and its inherent hurdles (however easily negotiated). There are fans who lack the time or inclination to recreate the absolutely ‘authentic’ experience; they just want convenient access and a decent level of accuracy. How else can the success of the various plug-and-play mini consoles be explained? They strike a balance between authenticity and practicality which clicks with the vast majority of gamers. Even enthusiasts have to compromise; CRTs, Framemeisters and bulky original hardware often don’t mix well with kids, pets and mortgages in a three-bedroom semi-detached. No wonder we’re rebuying all the classics on Switch.

Taking all these factors into account, don’t expect to see Slipstream on the eShop soon, however, well we believe it would fit alongside the likes of Virtua Racing. If stone-cold, sure-selling classics like GoldenEye 007 are stuck in licencing purgatory, what chance has an obscure Brazil-only arcade racer got?

In the old days we made the exact same mistake that the film industry did

We are slowly seeing progress, though, and there are examples of companies going above and beyond when it comes to game preservation that manages to make repackaging old games, classic or otherwise, attractive to all parties. “Screaming Villains is taking vintage video game remastering to the next level,” says Cifaldi. “Its version of Night Trap is now the definitive version of the game, and the extras they included are absolutely amazing.”

With devs like M2 and Digital Eclipse ready and willing to do the work, the onus inevitably falls on the big companies to greenlight retro projects and have the foresight to archive materials appropriately, something every dev should be endeavouring to do, whether tiny indie outfit or huge video gaming institution. On the face of it, Nintendo appears to have a decent record when it comes to preserving its history, as evidenced through the archived tidbits glimpsed in Iwata Asks interviews and the Hyrule Historia and the vein of material it taps into occasionally, often while promoting classic franchises like Zelda and Mario. Cifaldi cautions against having too much faith, though. “We really don’t know what Nintendo’s archiving practice is like, and I don’t think any of us in the archiving world are comfortable with just assuming they’ve got their stuff taken care of.”

On the topic of the general state of archiving and awareness among developers, he believes it’s a mixed bag. “I think it’s both better and worse. It’s better in the sense that companies are making a much better practice of archiving actual video game source code, because we finally live in a world where there’s a secondary market for a game. In the old days, we made the exact same mistake that the film industry did. In the 1930s, there wasn’t really a secondary market for a film. You made it, you sold it to theatres, you moved on. There wasn’t ‘home video’ yet – hell, there wasn’t TELEVISION yet – so the idea of archiving a movie for the future made no sense. That’s why almost all of those are gone now. Video games went through a similar time in the old days, but today the idea of doing a ‘remaster’ on a new console is so commonplace that it seems like source archiving is taken more seriously. On the flipside, almost no games are standalone, offline experiences anymore – they’re these living, breathing things that are updated, that have online communities, etc., so I feel that in some ways archiving a game is harder than ever.”

What is clear is that games and peripheral materials are inevitably being lost and it’s a race against the clock to preserve many games, especially the lesser-known ones, for future generations. Everything might be available if you know where to look, but there’s a wealth of context in the form of materials and information being lost, whether passing with the people who made them or simply being disregarded because ‘who’d want to play a weird Brazil-only F1 racer, right?’

Well, we would. Cifaldi has discussed in his excellent GDC talks how he is striving to create ‘documentaries you play with a controller’ or ‘coffee table books you play on a video game platform’. Making games themselves the document or ‘museum piece’ would seem to be the best way not only to present the software with some historical context (pretty much a necessity if you’re going to get much enjoyment from the NES version of Ikari Warriors, for example), but also put them into a profitable package. After all, it’s always about the bottom line.

There are many ways games could be adapted to also incorporate curated museum ‘tour’ features. Digital Eclipse incorporated a ‘jump in’ mechanic in the SNK Collection whereby players could watch a playthrough of the game and take control whenever they wished. Nintendo has done this in the past, although with its Luigi ‘Super Guide’ mode, and there are many ways this could expand in the future. For example, imagine a Mario Maker where you could not only flip between game styles, but also overlay original level templates, schematics, post-it notes and other design doc materials as you play. Perhaps ‘gamifying’ the museum exhibit is the best way to educate and preserve, and we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible.

In the meantime, we should do our best to support titles like the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection and the Disney Afternoon Collection (given the chance, eh Switch owners?!), as well as all the retro delights that are coming to Switch and other platforms. There are plenty more games out there deserving of some archival love, and companies ultimately need to see profit in revisiting the past. “My two favourite games of all time are Mother 3 and The Secret of Monkey Island,” Cifaldi concludes. “I think both are deserving of deeper explorations than we’ve seen.”

Mother 3, eh? Never heard of it.

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Many thanks to Frank for his contribution to this feature. You can find him on Twitter or via the Video Game History Foundation.

Christmas is over, Boxing Day’s been banished for another year and now you’re left combining three-day old scraps of turkey with whatever other leftovers and condiments are lying around the house. Yes, the inter-holiday lull has set in, and while it’s not quite up there with the January blues, it’s easy to slip into a turkey-induced funk between Christmas and New Year.

You should count your blessings, though – things could be so much worse! 2019 has been a bountiful year and lucky Switch owners will find a huge library of brilliant games to choose from to occupy themselves over the holiday period. Take care, though. The eShop is clogged with plenty of less accomplished efforts, and we’ve collected ten of the worst below for your reading ‘pleasure’.

Of course, it’s tough to say definitively what the absolute worst Switch game of 2019 was – the avalanche of software hitting the eShop prevents us from reviewing everything, but the following 10 titles are the lowest scoring games we’ve reviewed in the year 2019. All except number 10, that is. Numerically that entry scored slightly higher, but we’ve included it because, given the heritage of the series, we found the game so crushingly, demoralisingly disappointing, we simply had to feature it. A crying shame.

Okay, buckle up and brace yourselves – it’s going to be a rough ride…

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Which so many great games on the system, there’s no need to sample these turkeys, but have you had the misfortune of playing any of these games this year? Feel free to commiserate below, or perhaps offer an alternative take on any of the games above. Alternatively, add to them with your personal 2019 gaming disappointments…

In this series of end-of-year features, we’re summing up some of 2019’s biggest talking points.

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2019 was a big year for Pokémon fans, with the arrival of Gen 8 in the form of Sword & Shield. However, for many players, the game was something of an anticlimax; for the first time in the franchise’s history, a mainline Pokémon title launched with an incomplete Pokédex, something which caused quite a bit of discomfort for vocal portions of the fanbase. This led to many fans boycotting the game and review-bombing it on sites like Metacritic.

The great ‘Dexit’ debate threatened to completely overshadow the release of Pokémon: Sword & Shield, but robust sales have proven that even when you’ve lost the support of the most rabid fans of the series, you can still achieve commercial success.

While the performance of the game will have pleased Nintendo’s executives, the team at Game Freak will have been left slightly dazed by the whole experience, and it will be interesting to see how the studio reacts with its next Pokémon release. Will it bow to player pressure and fix the issues highlighted by dedicated players, or will it look at the sales figures and decide that what’s not broke doesn’t require fixing?

What did you make of Dexit? Do you think it will influence future Pokémon games? Let us know with a comment.

Traditionally, a one year anniversary is celebrated with paper. That definitely won’t be a problem for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s own one year anniversary; with a couple of months to spare, Nintendo’s mascot fighting game is already the best selling fighting video game of all time.

Nintendo sold as many copies of Smash Bros. Ultimate (15.71 million) in nine months than Street Fighter II (15.5 million) and its countless iterations have sold over 28 years. Ultimate has sold more copies than Nintendo sold Wii U consoles in that machine’s entire lifetime on the market. Ultimate can almost claim a ridiculous 1:3 adoption rate among people who own a Nintendo Switch.

So alright already, we get it – you all like to play Smash Bros. a lot. But today, we’re not focusing on all 15.71 million of you. Instead, we wanted to see how the ‘best of the best’ feel about the game after they’ve had a year to settle down with its ‘Everyone-Is-Here’ approach.

How are professional Smash players feeling about Ultimate, one year later?

Last year, Nintendo Life spoke to a select handful of professional players, tournament organizers, and eSports announcers to get a gauge on how they were preparing for the premiere of Nintendo’s then-unreleased fighting game. To mark the one year anniversary of Ultimate, we returned to many of those same players (plus a few new ones) and followed up on many of the original questions, including their reactions to Nintendo’s support of their scene, who they think is the best player, as well as the best characters going into 2020.

Here’s what they said.

How Are Pros Playing Smash?

Guess what? Smashers like to stream themselves playing Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Before Ultimate was released, it was an easy prediction that streaming and content creation were both going to ramp up for this first Smash Bros. game released during the modern internet era. The real question is, how well has the streaming and content creation all come along?

Well, the view isn’t terrible from the top. But one year in, the competitive community at large still has an appreciable amount of ground to cover, if you’re judging it by other eSport or gaming standards.

Last time, we used Twitch followers as a metric to see how Smash for Wii U (Smash 4) compared to its contemporaries, and by that measure – at least on Twitch – Smash Ultimate is just about the king of the fighting genre.

Here are the follower counts for ten relevant fighting titles on Twitch, as of this publication:

1. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 1.6 million
2. Dragon Ball FighterZ – 1.6 million
3. Street Fighter V – 1.4 million
4. Tekken 7 – 1.2 million
5. Super Smash Bros. Melee – 1 million
6. Mortal Kombat 11 – 682k
7. Injustice 2 – 535k
8. EA Sports UFC 3 – 361k
9. Jump Force – 113k
10. Soul Calibur VI – 96k

(Note that while Dragon Ball FighterZ and Ultimate share an overhead tie for number of followers, Ultimate tends to beat it out when it comes to average number of streamers, and is likely to outlast it overall, at least if Super Smash Bros. Melee’s existence on this list is any indication.)

Even though these are nowhere near the numbers of games like Fortnite (50.3 million), Counter-Strike: GO (19.3 million), or League of Legends (22.2 million), it’s pretty clear that the general public has a taste for Ultimate, pushing the game well beyond what Smash 4 accomplished in a far shorter time. This is in no small part due to the Switch’s larger install base. “You can go on Twitch any time and see a few smashers with 100-plus viewers on stream, sometimes even more than 1,000. Many people have had their Twitter following double, or even triple,” says Samuel “Dabuz” Buzby to Nintendo Life about Ultimate’s accomplishment.

Smash enjoys a decent presence over on YouTube as well, where many of the top individual competitors enjoy subscription amounts ranging roughly between 100-200k at the high end. Not bad!

A notable, major outlier, however, is Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios, the undisputed best Smash 4 player who today currently enjoys 819k subscribers, despite opting to hardly compete in the Ultimate professional circuit. That he has found success without competing highlights the glaring change in how the pros are playing Smash since Ultimate’s release.

Smash players are en masse no longer in the business of pushing tournament-level play. They’ve largely moved on to patch and DLC reaction videos, character highlights, playing non-Smash games, and just-plain memeing. That’s where the ad revenue money is, and they’re now in competition with non-Smash Bros. focused channels who post about Smash Bros. on the side. Perennial Smash contender Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman agrees with this change in philosophy. “If, say, Mr. Game & Watch wins a big tournament or performs very well… it might be a good idea to look into that character, research it, and make a video on it.” He adds, “At (the) game’s release, many people want to do content such as World of Light or other one-player modes… I personally did a World of Light run without using Spirits to make it more challenging and fun.”

The 23-year-old “ZeRo” Barrios is so successful at this new approach one year into Ultimate, Facebook just signed him to an exclusivity streaming deal.

And it’s apparently working out pretty well.

And this is the road that will continue to be taken, because headline players like “ZeRo”, who has entered a “whopping” two Ultimate tournaments to date, correctly realize they literally can make far more money streaming themselves watching a tournament than they can playing in a tournament. (Barrios himself did not respond for comment.)

And that brings us to the next major headline about the Smash pro scene one year in.

Where’s The Money?

Literally every single person interviewed for this piece brought up this same sentiment without provocation: the first year of Smash Ultimate has done very little to change the relatively tiny pots for Super Smash Bros. tournaments.

esportsearnings.com lists Smash Ultimate at $1,089,813.75 overall earnings from mainline tournaments in 2019. It sounds like a lot, right? It’s not. That total is good for a ridiculously low 55th place, despite almost 1,000 separate tournaments and several thousands of registered players, which dwarfs most other titles. If you click to see the list for yourself, you might be shocked to see some of the decades-old titles that are bringing in more money with typically a fraction of the amount of mindshare.

“The payout for Smash Ultimate is downright embarrassing,” says Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma to Nintendo Life, the world’s best Super Smash Bros. Melee player. “It is tragic how little money the top players make for competing at events compared to the viewership and the impressions that this game gets on a social basis. It is a travesty. This needs to change.”

Some players were quick to cite some improvements over the pools from previous games in the series, however. “The payout of the tournaments have been better than Smash 4… but I still think it’s too bad compared to other fighting games,” tells us Leonardo “MKLeo” Lopez Perez, the top-ranked Ultimate player one year in. “Many people make more than I made in 14 years, by just winning or placing high at one single event,” laments Zimmerman.

So sure, things are better than the miserly monetary support of Smash 64, Melee (back then), and Brawl. But the money still isn’t great.

If there is any credit to throw Nintendo’s way regarding how it’s handled this problem, it’s this: after Ultimate, the company is both more aware of and involved with the professional gaming scene today than at any other point in its long existence. It runs an official eSports Twitter account where it shouts out highlight plays from top players across multiple games. It has put on intermittent online tournaments in America, Europe, and Japan. Nintendo hosted a glitzy, competitive event to coincide with the gaming industry’s flagship E3 expo, albeit to mixed results. And in the so-close-but-yet-so-far department, Nintendo is an official sponsor for major fighting game tournaments, including the flagship fighting game EVO series. This year it was, in fact, Ultimate that broke all-time EVO viewership records with 279,000 people tuning in to watch the final set.

But the majority of all of that stuff, specifically the part where the big, red Nintendo logo is officially broadcast onto 279,000 monitors, tablets, and smartphones, should not be mistaken as full-on support. It’s smart marketing. And to the surprise of nobody, Ultimate’s release has not helped birth an equivalent to The Capcom Cup, with its prize pool of $250,000, let alone the Starcraft World Championship Series with $600,000 or the Fortnite World Cup’s out of this world $30 million.

And even though they’re not shocked, the pros are still hurt.

”Only the top [players] make enough money from events to attend more,” explains Buzby. Buzby describes the range of 7th-13th place, let alone bottom 32 or beyond, as monetarily worthless. “These are the placings where you’re breaking even or even losing money for attending the events.” Thinking of going out there and trying yourself? Well, it’s extremely difficult to make top 16 even in a tournament of 50 participants, let alone hundreds or thousands of participants. Many of those interviewed suggest that in 2019, the only way to exist as a “professional Smash player” is through content making and sponsorship, not placement alone.

Are sponsorship opportunities picking up any slack? On the topic of sponsorship, Victoria “VikkiKitty” Pérez, professional announcer for various Smash Bros. tournaments and events, has seen an expanded interest. “We have Cloud9, TSM, Liquid, NRG, eUnited and so many other talented players joining large orgs.” This has extended into the Melee scene as well, despite the fact that Smash players are at an overall disadvantage compared to streamers who can be sponsored by more traditional PC and controller makers.

Yet regardless of what they hold in their hands or wear on their shirts, the skill level needed to be watched by a well over a quarter of a million people, and therefore be sponsored, remains upper-echelon. Sponsored or not, these smashers are bringing in tons of ad revenue for lots of people. It’s just not an achievement Nintendo wants to sponsor, unlike other gaming companies.

“It’s the only company that really isn’t putting money into pot bonuses, even though they very, very easily could,” “Hungrybox” DeBiedma emphasizes.

One year in, little has changed from the past regarding Smash’s ongoing professional prospects, institutionally speaking.

Is The Gameplay Good?

Ultimate’s overall gameplay is seen as a net positive by the pros.

This year has seen this latest Smash game develop in ways largely similar to the game that preceded it, with all its improvements not easily felt by most casual observers. But its subtle refinements to its pacing and internal logic have been strongly felt and appreciated by the pro community.

“It’s been a year since Smash Ultimate came out and I don’t feel disappointed, this is the best smash game in my opinion,” says “MKLeo” Lopez Perez.

“I absolutely love this game both as an organizer, player, and a fan,” says Bassem “Bear” Dahdouh, eSports Manager of Esports Arena Las Vegas and co-organizer for Genesis, EVO, and more. “I enjoy the vast amount of characters part of the lineup along with the various top-level play that can be watched among the professional players. The game has surpassed my expectations.”

Dahdouh adds that he also appreciates the changes in the functionality of the game, not just its gameplay. “In an organizational aspect, it’s leaps easier to host events for the game, given the versatile nature of the game along with multiple ways to ensure all characters are unlocked if a mass amount of setups are needed.”

With (mostly) only the smallest of quibbles here and there, like wistful hopes for additional modes or a fix to the character Hero by making his on-screen menu move legible in all languages, every person interviewed was in agreement that the meat of Smash Ultimate makes for not just an acceptable competitive game, but an exceptional one.

And in case you are wondering, yeah, all the pros said they use the GameCube controller – exclusively.

How’s The Online Mode?

If there is one major complaint the pros have about Ultimate one year into its existence beyond monetary support, it was expressed loud and clear: the online functionality needs improvement.

“This is my biggest gripe with Ultimate,” begins “Dabuz” Buzby, “Online is hard to use for practice because the native input delay in Ultimate, plus the minimum input delay for netplay, ruins execution and skews tier lists hard. I have really good internet and even when I play someone else with good internet living near me, it’s noticeably different [than local play].” Adds “VikkiKitty” Perez, “It’s very common to run into players with unstable internet connections, which allows them to cheat and farm wins off of other players.”

In addition to complaints about the lack of native servers and better netcode and therefore the lack of stability, there were qualms with the functionality of the online mode, as well.

Buzby adds, “The lack of a true ranking is a bit underwhelming, GSP isn’t a good substitute, and I wish there were more matchmaking modes, like items only, ‘crazy’ stages only, (free for all) only, etc., instead of having to set your own rules and hope you get a match with them. And since we only have ranked play or arenas, there’s no fun casual mode, something Smash 4 had.”

Which Character Is the Best?

Are you only reading this article to figure out which character will help you beat all of your friends?

Well, pro Smash players aren’t exactly sure who the very best character is, if such a thing can exist among a roster of 75. But they have a pretty good idea who can help you out.

The most common responses we heard when asking for the best character were Joker, Pikachu, and Peach. Some of the other characters most frequently name-dropped include Snake, Palutena, Zero Suit Samus, and newcomer Terry Bogard.

Who does “MKLeo” Lopez Perez, the top-ranked Ultimate player who predominantly plays as Joker, feel is the best character?

“I personally think Pikachu and Peach are the best characters. I remember that I used to think Link was the best…so I would say my opinion and metagame changed a lot from the beginning.”

This speaks to the malleable nature of Smash Ultimate and its character balance. The game has seen no fewer than 13 patches, and is also already within striking distance of the release of a fifth downloadable character.

“Nintendo’s patches have continued to be very conservative compared to any other fighting game or eSport – always a half step forward, zero steps back.” explains Kyle “Thinkaman” Brockman, a Smashboards moderator and meta contributor.

“Patch 3.1 was the most notable – the development team gave modest nerfs to five characters, who happened to be exactly the top five characters according to aggregate pro player opinions at that point (i.e., Wolf, Pichu, Peach, Olimar, and Lucina). Each of these characters (are) still performing very well, but now more in-line with the other top characters.” In this way, he describes Nintendo’s approach as attentive, but slow-but-steady. “They have focused on giving medium-sized sets of buffs to only six or so characters at a time. We’ve usually seen small but obvious jumps in tournament performance from this, but never anything destabilizing.”

That Nintendo is adjusting characters in response to actual tournament results is a revelation to many players who had grown accustomed to balance changes for seemingly random characters in the Smash games previous. And the fact that Ultimate has done such a great job at being balanced with such a huge roster is frankly, a feat never been done before in a fighting game before it.

“Despite 75 unique characters – 75 chances to screw up the balance – things are pretty good. In the last year, 59 characters have been played in the top 8 of national tournaments; 67 if you include large regionals and medium-sized countries like Australia. These are frankly incredible numbers,” adds Brockman.

There do exist tier lists for Ultimate, of course. But if you’re good enough with a character, odds are you might be able to go out there and change the tier list … maybe single-handedly. Go for it.

Who Are The Top Players?

Has the personnel changed much from Smash 4 into Ultimate? Among the survey questions, we asked the top players who among them they felt were the best.

Buzby summarizes the overall scene like this, “The rankings between the end of Smash 4 and Ultimate are largely the same among American players, but very different for the international players.”

On who is ranking specifically, “While ordering is different, players that transitioned well into Ultimate are MKLeo, Nairo, Tweek, Marss, Samsora, Cosmos, Void, Esam, (and myself). The people that became less impactful on the rankings sadly are Mr.R , Larry, Komorikiri, and KEN. Finally, new names or people that experienced a big boost in results between games are Zackray, Gluttony, Shuton, Maister, and Dark Wizzy.”

“Hungrybox” DeBiedma echoes much of these sentiments while surveying the scene that has seen some players like ZeRo leaving for content creation over playing competitively. “Japan is still very, very powerful. MKLeo is still the god of both games. Nairo is a top player. Tweek now (is) one of the top ones. The only thing (I think) that isn’t going to change (going forward)…is MKLeo being the best and Samsora being top three.”

What About Melee?

The question that always persists between Smash titles is whether or not Super Smash Bros. Melee – the longstanding, hyper-competitive game released in 2001 – will finally be put to rest by the newest version.

Well, if you were waiting on it, it’s not happening. One year into Ultimate, Melee isn’t going anywhere. In some ways, it’s bigger than ever. And unlike times in the past, the players seem pretty happy with this coexistence.

“[The release of Ultimate] has been only good [for Melee], I think,” says “Hungrybox” DeBiedma, still the top Melee player on the scene. “The focus on tournaments happening is more geared towards Ultimate, but Melee has peacefully coexisted with Ultimate for awhile. And at many events, Melee has not only matched viewership, in some cases, it’s actually had a higher viewership… which is really, really interesting to see.”

Many players said they played one of Ultimate or Melee casually, though only one surveyed said they continued to play both games at a high level.

“I decided to stop playing Melee for a year to play Ultimate since I wanted to do something different and new. However, sometimes I find that switching the games can be difficult, as I often do different types of ‘survival DI’ in each game…which can negatively affect me in tournaments since it changes my recent muscle memory and habits.” says “Mew2King” Zimmerman, a frequent competitor to both games at a high level. He describes the biggest hurdle towards being a dual competitor as the technological difference between the titles.

“The hardest part for me between switching Smash games is the difference in input delay. Melee has very minimal input delay, whereas Ultimate has many frames of input delay, and I find this difficult, personally.”

Still, more and more players from the Melee community are making the jump. Says “MKLeo” Lopez Perez on this symbiosis, “Melee has been always a pleasure to watch and I’m glad people like Leffen, Armada and Plup are in the Ultimate community now.”

This is the landscape DeBiedma foresees for all Smash scenes going forward. “I think for the remainder of time, as long as there is no re-release, or HD (version), or any true sequel to Melee, Smash majors will always have Melee and ‘insert newest Smash title here’. We take pride in the games that are special.”

What’s Next For Ultimate’s Pros?

One year in, the pros continue to learn, play, and adapt. In a wild year that has seen this fighting game take off financially in unprecedented fashion, curious futurists can simply take every single section of this article and multiply it. It’s not rocket science.

There will be more content made on YouTube and Twitch, Ultimate will be featured at more big-name tournaments, there will be more tier lists, and there will be much more DLC. Nintendo has already announced more characters beyond the five more already promised, in fact.

The only things not guaranteed in 2020 and beyond are the other things Nintendo themselves control: iteration on online functionality, and the financial impetus for enthusiasts to keep on attending tournaments and competing, unless they are also part-time or full-time content creators or announcers.

“We need developer support. I can’t stress this enough,” says ”Hungrybox” DeBiedma. “Nintendo, given the resources that they have and given what every other company who creates fighting games (have) done – whether it’s Capcom for the Capcom Cup, for instance, or any of the huge Mortal Kombat Cups that are run, we need developer support.”

Some players have suggested a professionally-sponsored circuit would bring in the needed organization, sponsorship, and structure these players and commentators need. There is no indication that is on the horizon.

Overall, the pros are playing the same game you are, and they seem to be loving it and pushing it as far as the game can go. It’s just that when they boot up the game, they say they’re concerned with figuring out how to parlay their unmatched skills at playing, talking about, and organizing Smash Bros. within an economic landscape that is increasingly rewarding them for their dedication, yet alongside a developer that continues to keep them at arm’s length.

And so this is what’s on the mind of professional Smash players these days: going into 2020, Nintendo is now the owner of the most popular fighting game of all time. What are they going to do with it?

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We’d like to give a massive thank you to Robert Paul for allowing us to use his incredible photos to illustrate this piece, as well as all the participants who shared their thoughts for this piece.