One of the biggest video game eSports tournaments to happen on an annual basis is the fighting game community’s Evo Championship Series. This tournament is like the Holy Grail for professional fighting game enthusiasts and it just received one of the biggest endorsements from an unlikely company: Nintendo.
Nintendo Enthusiast is reporting that the Big ‘N’ dropped their guard and apparently decided to join in on the eSports fun for this year’s championship series. This follows on a very strong and very positive showing at this year’s E3 event, where instead of using the Nokia stage for a typical media presentation, Nintendo opted to pull off a digital E3 Direct and then follow it up later in the day with a live tournament for the Wii U.
To say the least, Nintendo’s unorthodox methods of introducing new characters into the universe went over extremely well. The vociferous crowd made it known that they were enjoying everything that Nintendo was rolling out that day.
It appears as if E3 was just part of a multi-step process in Nintendo continuing their marketing efforts to stay relevant in the gaming scene. As noted in the Nintendo Enthusiast article – and as spotted on the official sponsors list for this year’s Evo, you can clearly see that Nintendo has joined the likes of other companies in supporting the FGC scene. Check out the image below.
It’s funny because just last year Nintendo tried to shutdown the presence of at Evo’s 2013 series, as reported and detailed by Polygon. Eventually things worked out and the game managed to stream (becoming one of the top viewed finals of the weekend) and keep fans of Nintendo’s multiplayer brawler happy.
This year it looks like the company has done a complete 180, taking an eventful page right out of Microsoft’s playbook.
Does this mean we can expect future support of the FGC from the Big ‘N’? Who knows, maybe or maybe not.
What’s for certain is that 2014 seems to be the year that Nintendo is making a pretty big comeback following an abysmal first two quarters of 2013.
You can learn more about Evo 2013 by paying a visit to the official website.
for the Wii U is set for release on December 2nd.
