Pokken Tournament Will Feature at EVO 2016

[Steven Bogos]

Pokken Tournament Will Feature at EVO 2016

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This year's EVO fighting game tournament will feature Pokken Tournament alongside the likes of Street Fighter V and Super Smash Bros. Melee.

In a move that is sure to perplex hardcore fighting game enthusiasts, Pokken Tournament [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/evo], the Pokemon fighting game, will be featured at EVO 2016.

Pokken Tournament joins Super Smash Bros. Wii U, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Street Fighter V, Guilty Gear Xrd, Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat X, Killer Instinct, and Tekken 7 as the games that will be played at the event. This means that Nintendo games now make up 1/3 of the entire roster, which considering just three years ago the company tried to block [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125837-Nintendo-Tried-to-Block-Evo-Streams] Super Smash Bros. Melee from being featured in the tournament is pretty impressive.

It also means that Pikachu will be playable in 1/3 of the games at EVO...

The decision will be controversial to fighting game fans, as other favorites such as Blazblue and Street Fighter IV have been bumped from the tournament in favor of Pokken Tournament. Additionally, Pokken Tournament, unlike many other traditional fighting games, eschews the arcade "fight stick" in favor of a traditional controller.

EVO 2016 is scheduled for July 15-17 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Source: Shroyuken [http://shoryuken.com/2016/01/26/evo-2016-lineup-revealed-street-fighter-smash-guilty-gear-pokken-and-more/]

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[ShakerSilver]

Nintendo must be really lining Mr. Wizard's pockets this year. Now he can get all the McRibs.

Overall though, this lineup is pretty weird. MKX, KI, and Marvel are still there for some reason, despite growing the lack of enthusiasm for the games. Two Smash games still seems excessive. I was under the impression that last year was meant to test whether or not the hype was behind Melee or Smash 4, and since Melee is still going strong while 4 is slowly fading, it should be fairly obvious where most of the hype is at. Tekken 7, Pokken, and SFV don't even have home console releases yet - with no word at all on when Tekken will be released - so the meta is going to be super underdeveloped. Pokken itself is going to be interesting to watch - it may be a huge failure or another happy accident like Melee.

I'm still bummed that KoF got bumped off since last year. I guess SNK doesn't help the McRib-fund enough. Hopefully KoF XIV gets added to the next lineup after it gets released.

 

[blackdwarf]

I have never played Pokken, but I wasn't convinced that it is worth playing either.

I am pretty salty that this is the line-up this year. Some of the picks are straight up a joke to me. Why do we have two smash games again? Although I can at least respect the technicality of Melee, I think it is kind of boring to watch, but why add smash 4? the game, although casual, is pretty much the same stuff with the major differences being looking like a slow-mo melee which is just boring to watch.

Then suddenly we get Pokken. I am just not convinced that this game deserves a spot on EVO. It is possible that, when EVO happens, that I will see how the game works and that I will like it, but no western players will be able to compete so it why even bother watching if the results are going to be pretty obvious. Tekken 7 had this problem last year too and this will not change this year. Both these game don't have a console release and are only playable in arcade, so why do they get a spot on a western tournament?

But the biggest crime of them all is the absence of SFIV. At this moment the most popular fighting game there is, but it is getting a sequel, which so far is pretty different game and still has to prove itself, so it deserves no place. It just baffling to me that we get two smash games which are pretty similar, with the exception of the skill gap, but can the game that pretty much saved Fighting games as a genre because that game is getting a sequel.

And why still marvel? I don't know about you, but I am not fan watching public necrophilia and that game is dead.

EVo is more the biggest joke of the FGC than its biggest tournament.

 

[fieryshadowcard]

The decision will be controversial to fighting game fans, as other favorites such as Blazblue and Street Fighter IV have been bumped from the tournament in favor of Pokken Tournament. Additionally, Pokken Tournament, unlike many other traditional fighting games, eschews the arcade "fight stick" in favor of a traditional controller.

EVO 2016 is scheduled for July 15-17 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Source: Shroyuken [http://shoryuken.com/2016/01/26/evo-2016-lineup-revealed-street-fighter-smash-guilty-gear-pokken-and-more/]

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Most MKX players use traditional controllers anyway, so whatever "controversy" you're talking about must've already happened at last year's EVO (it didn't), not to mention there are quite a few top players in games where the arcade stick is vastly preferred that still opt to use a controller. Also, Pikachu being in a third of the games seems largely irrelevant when one could easily say the same thing about Akuma.

 

[xaszatm]

Nintendo must be really lining Mr. Wizard's pockets this year. Now he can get all the McRibs.

Overall though, this lineup is pretty weird. MKX, KI, and Marvel are still there for some reason, despite growing the lack of enthusiasm for the games. Two Smash games still seems excessive. I was under the impression that last year was meant to test whether or not the hype was behind Melee or Smash 4, and since Melee is still going strong while 4 is slowly fading, it should be fairly obvious where most of the hype is at. Tekken 7, Pokken, and SFV don't even have home console releases yet - with no word at all on when Tekken will be released - so the meta is going to be super underdeveloped. Pokken itself is going to be interesting to watch - it may be a huge failure or another happy accident like Melee.

I'm still bummed that KoF got bumped off since last year. I guess SNK doesn't help the McRib-fund enough. Hopefully KoF XIV gets added to the next lineup after it gets released.

What universe are you living in? The Smash 4 numbers have been consistent and growing. The numbers aren't dwindling at all. The last major had record numbers in both players and viewers.

 

[ShakerSilver]

What universe are you living in? The Smash 4 numbers have been consistent and growing. The numbers aren't dwindling at all. The last major had record numbers in both players and viewers.

Just an observation: while Smash 4 is seeing some growth, it seems to be slowing quite a bit - comparing turnout numbers at the big January majors of this year and last year (Apex '15 and Genesis 3), Smash 4 saw about an increase of +200 (0.8k to 1k) compared to Melee's +800 (1k to 1.8k). I found that odd considering Smash 4 had enormous turnout at last EVO (1.9k), barely outdoing Melee (1.8k) but then nothing has gotten close to that - meanwhile Melee had TBH5 in October of '15 with 1.3k entrants. In terms of viewership, I will say the view counts are similar to between the majors (90k at last Apex and Genesis I believe), but I will note that even at EVO the viewer count was about 90k too (although it was on the Saturday stream and not the Sunday stream). Either way, I don't recall any broken records for Smash 4 at Genesis.

I mean I'm not saying Smash 4 is dying, but I'm definitely not seeing the same hype behind it as Melee. To be fair though, it's not exactly a fair comparison, given how long Melee has been going. Right now though, Smash 4's scene seems to be mirroring Brawl's scene - starts out really strong in its first year as it takes after Melee's scene but slowly starts seeing a decrease which increases over the next few years (this has yet to be seen). This time instead of Melee dying out as the new game is released, Melee ended up becoming bigger than ever with the growing Smash Bros hype. Time will tell if Smash 4 manages to continue riding that hype train or if it will follow Brawl and eventually just dwindle down until only the diehard fans are left.

 

[xaszatm]

What universe are you living in? The Smash 4 numbers have been consistent and growing. The numbers aren't dwindling at all. The last major had record numbers in both players and viewers.

Just an observation: while Smash 4 is seeing some growth, it seems to be slowing quite a bit - comparing turnout numbers at the big January majors of this year and last year (Apex '15 and Genesis 3), Smash 4 saw about an increase of +200 (0.8k to 1k) compared to Melee's +800 (1k to 1.8k). I found that odd considering Smash 4 had enormous turnout at last EVO (1.9k), barely outdoing Melee (1.8k) but then nothing has gotten close to that - meanwhile Melee had TBH5 in October of '15 with 1.3k entrants. In terms of viewership, I will say the view counts are similar to between the majors (90k at last Apex and Genesis I believe), but I will note that even at EVO the viewer count was about 90k too (although it was on the Saturday stream and not the Sunday stream). Either way, I don't recall any broken records for Smash 4 at Genesis.

I mean I'm not saying Smash 4 is dying, but I'm definitely not seeing the same hype behind it as Melee. To be fair though, it's not exactly a fair comparison, given how long Melee has been going. Right now though, Smash 4's scene seems to be mirroring Brawl's scene - starts out really strong in its first year as it takes after Melee's scene but slowly starts seeing a decrease which increases over the next few years (this has yet to be seen). This time instead of Melee dying out as the new game is released, Melee ended up becoming bigger than ever with the growing Smash Bros hype. Time will tell if Smash 4 manages to continue riding that hype train or if it will follow Brawl and eventually just dwindle down until only the diehard fans are left.

But Brawl's numbers dropped relatively quickly after launch. Smash 4's numbers are consistent. The only outlier was Evo 2015 with its 1.9k entrants. Smash 4 otherwise consistently does 200-500 entrants on an regional tournament and 700-1000 entrants on a national. Melee is much more unbalanced. Major Tournaments (with the outlier of Evo 2015) usually have Melee at record huge numbers due to the all-star cast Melee players are. Major Tournaments had 1k+ entrants at least in the last year. After that, however, regional tournaments are 100-400 on average and even if a major player is there than its around 200-500 or around Wii U's numbers. Viewership count is similar. Weekly Wii U and Melee tournaments actually give more views towards Wii U if no major player is in Melee and even viewership ratings are pretty consistent in Majors with Wii U averaging 90-95k and Melee averaging 100-110k. That's not really dwindling down.

And yes, I have had this conversation before with Melee purists (not saying you are of course). Sometimes Melee fans make me hate that game...