To emphasize that comment:
[Snip about the developers having played for 10,000 hours or some such thing]
So yeah, that's pretty clear that the developers are hardcore gamers themselves.
Having played forever doesn't mean anything. There are people who play Smash religiously and don't even know what wavedashing is. It is not how often you play, it is
who you play. I'm 100% confident someone from these boards with a basic knowledge of advanced techniques, who has been to decent tournaments and placed top 10, could kick the everloving crap out of any one of the developers in japan. They're most likely guys who love the game and love the idea of making another, in their 30s, with tremendous programming/artistic talent.
Think about it. Nothing about any one of the "advanced" techs is obvious. I had no idea what wavedashing was or how it could be useful before I started playing good people. I had no idea what L-cancelling was or how it could be useful.
Someone mentioned earlier about how less than 20% of smashers know about the tournament scene. Are you kidding? I'd estimate less than 5% know about it, and pro gamers, as big as our community has gotten, constitute a vanishingly small percentage of the population that has purchased a copy of Super Smash Brothers Melee.
My prediction (you heard it here first): All of our techs that we take for granted will be gone, with the possible exception of l-cancelling (maaaaaybe). The game will be radically different, everyone will be dissapointed, and people will continue playing Melee competitively. At this point either a competitive Brawl scene will arise based around new "glitches" and new "advanced techs", or the game will be scene as more primitive and a vibrant tourney scene will not form.
The game will be radically different from Melee. The sooner people realize this the sooner they'll sleep better at night.
As far as Nintendo's concerned, people who can wavedash or l-cancell don't matter at all. That doesn't sell games. Colorful characters with random items and "wacky, zany fun" sells games. Cause really, that's how we all started out, right? Well, most of us.
Manacloud's got it spot on. Those of you who don't know who he is should find out, and then go back and read what he's got to say.
Edit: one more thing.
Why are people talking about appealing to PRO players? That isn't the topic. The topic is appealing to COMPETITIVE players(a much larger pool than pros).
By what I've read, Smash is the #1 game on the gamecube by a fair margin. Heck, a used copy still fetches over $20 in most places, while Metroid Prime (another top title with a similar age) costs almost nothing.
When any business not run by idiots does something incredibly successful, they spend time figuring out what that was, so that they can do it again.
So, the question is, what made smash work so well? It is that smash appeals to every skill level. People talk about competitive vs. casual players as if there's some line between them, but that isn't the case at all. There is a huge range between highly casual and highly competitive and quite a few players at every point on this scale.
So, to answer the original post, I would say "Yes, Nintendo is both aware and interested in the competitive community." In SSBM, Nintendo created a formula that produced the most successful game on the console. I don't see any advantage to switching to more of a Mario Party formula where the guy who's played 20 hours has about equal chance to the guy who's played 2000.
You're completely off base here. Smash didn't sell well because it appealed to competetive players. Smash selled well because it has a solid, engaging physics engine, fun characters, a decent amount of depth to be offered, and compelling characters with fun moves in exciting stages. All of that is what sold so many copies. 98% of people who ever bought smash do not know what wavedashing or l-cancelling are. The game has a solid amount of depth to those people, and is just darn fun.
You're also wrong about the fact that there is no "line". There is absolutely a line. The line is, if you've been to tourneys or played people who use advanced techs and are good, or you haven't. It is impossible to be (by our definition) decent at this game without having the mindgames and experience that comes with tourney practice. Thus, people who attend tournies and practice their tech skill and mindgames will be 500% better than people who don't. That is the line.
And what you don't seem to realize is that this line is drawn at like 1 to 2% of all Smash owners. That is what I, and many others, mean by the "competitive scene." So no, they will absolutely not cater to us. They do not care about us. They might unintentionally do things that we like. But they might not.
