At Evolution Championship Series (EVO) Japan 2020, winning first place at “Street Fighter V” can net you a cool 1 million yen or $9000 and winning first place at “Soul Calibur VI” is worth 500,000 yen ($4,500).
What’s the prize for winning first at “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate?”
Shuto “Shuton” Moriya, who won first place with Captain Olimar, found that the feat wins you a Switch Pro Controller, valued at $59, with a Smash symbol on it.
This slap in the face just goes to show that Nintendo doesn’t respect its professional players.
To put into perspective just how much Nintendo does not seem to take the fast-growing field of esports seriously, consider that EVO Japan is actually on the low end of prize winnings.
OG, the winners of the 2019 “Dota 2” tournament, The International, won over $15 million, which split evenly among the five players is about $3 million each.
Even the comparably modest “League of Legends” World Championship 2019 paid out over $800,000 to the winning team.
Players in its professional league, the League Championship Series, are salaried on top of that.
Nintendo has always done things in its own way and while their approach has yielded them some unique and game-changing contributions to gaming, their refusal to adopt innovations long held as industry standards has shot them in the foot multiple times.
Its online networks makes finding a game with your friends a chore, despite Microsoft perfecting the process almost two decades ago with the original Xbox.
It is also way behind in the graphics race, only recently adopting the 1080p graphics on the Nintendo Switch despite the fact that 1080p was the standard for game consoles by 2015 and modern consoles are now moving into 4K territory.
And of course, in what is quickly becoming a billion-dollar industry, Nintendo is effectively a no-show, leaving their esports scene to be run by independent parties and fans and contributing as little as a Switch Pro Controller.
Even their official events, like the Smash Ultimate North American Open or Inkling Invitational for “Splatoon 2,” seem to have little hype and relatively paltry prices.
Last year’s SSBU North American Open, for instance, was held entirely online save for the 1v1 finals held at the Frostbite tournament
in Detroit.
The winnings there are low-stakes, with last year’s first place winner, Team SoloMid’s Gavin “Tweek” Dempsey took home just shy of $5,000.
While this is a seemingly impressive amount, keep in mind that the “Hearthstone” Collegiate Championship, a tournament for the digital card game “Hearthstone,” had a much higher payout.
Despite arguably requiring less technical skill and definitely requiring much less mechanical skill than “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate,” the first place winner of the “Hearthstone” Collegiate Championship won a $9,000 scholarship.
With esports on the rise, they are already being left in the dust by their competitors.
It’s quite telling that according to Dexerto, an esports publication, as soon as Shuton was handed his prize, it broke.
