• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Bill Trinen is the special guest in this week's IGN Nintendo Voice Chat podcast

Does he mention his strategy going into Smash @ evo?
He says he will be maining Yoshi and Rosalina Luma. Has a couple other characters in his back pocket.

Also states, that Nintendo isn't in the investment part of sponsorship i.e. Pot bonus. They just want to help the tourney get more views and equipment.
 

Vena

Member
Also states, that Nintendo isn't in the investment part of sponsorship i.e. Pot bonus. They just want to help the tourney get more views and equipment.

Ultimately, its all the same. The hardware for modern tournies is tens of thousands of dollars in investments, since the equipment isn't cheap these days.

Still, would be better for their PR if they threw a few grand into the pools as it is more visible.
 

Tomohawk

Member
So their support of the smash tournament scene, basically involves tweeting and making sure tournaments have enough set ups. Kind of disappointing, that's relatively nothing compared to what other companies are doing.
 
IGN: How awesome is Nintendo, Bill?

Bill: So awesome.
I expect him to rip Nintendo a new one instead since he just got fired.

Isn't he also going to be at EVO for one of the Smash tournaments? Or is he competing in both Melee and Smash 4? Remember reading somewhere he apparently still talks a lot about playing Melee on his twitter.
 

Oregano

Member
Ultimately, its all the same. The hardware for modern tournies is tens of thousands of dollars in investments, since the equipment isn't cheap these days.

Still, would be better for their PR if they threw a few grand into the pools as it is more visible.

Well if Nintendo were oferring prize money would Bill be able to enter?
 

Tomohawk

Member
Ultimately, its all the same. The hardware for modern tournies is tens of thousands of dollars in investments, since the equipment isn't cheap these days.

Still, would be better for their PR if they threw a few grand into the pools as it is more visible.

Nintendo's offering setups and even then, they don't say if its for free, since they basically gave refurbished consoles to a company that works in providing set ups.
 

joseotero

Neo Member
Literally just finished listening to it. Good stuff. Don't expect hard-hitting questions though.

Opportunities for tougher/more general questions will come. We told you what Bill was here to talk about before the interview so you wouldn't go in with crazy expectations. We still managed to get some cool stories out of him.
 

Vena

Member
Nintendo's offering setups and even then, they don't say if its for free, since they basically gave refurbished consoles to a company that works in providing set ups.

Because they can't say, obviously. They're a business, Bill can't just say, in public, "Ya we gave away 40k$ in hardware."

But from APEX, we know that Nintendo gave them the hardware.
 

@MUWANdo

Banned
So their support of the smash tournament scene, basically involves tweeting and making sure tournaments have enough set ups. Kind of disappointing, that's relatively nothing compared to what other companies are doing.

Would you rather they bought their way into tournaments and inconvenienced other players/games like some other companies have done for certain games?
 

Balb

Member
I feel like Nintendo Treehouse should do a monthly podcast to share stories and experiences.

It's tough because Nintendo employees are always so guarded (as mandated, obviously). Would be nice to have a really candid interview/discussion for once.
 

Tomohawk

Member
Because they can't say, obviously. They're a business, Bill can't just say, in public, "Ya we gave away 40k$ in hardware."

But from APEX, we know that Nintendo gave them the hardware.

What do you mean they can't say, companies brag about this stuff all the time since its good press. They gave Gaming Generations their refurbished wii u console set ups, and we don't know the deal involved there. Unless gaming generations is not for profit, I can't imagine why they'd give the consoles to them for free. Even if they did though, it still isn't doing that much compared to companies a fraction of the size of nintendo.

Would you rather they bought their way into tournaments and inconvenienced other players/games like some other companies have done for certain games?

What do you mean by inconvenienced, they already ran ads at apex, I don't see anything they can do that makes sense that would inconvenience players by them providing pot bonuses, sponsorship's, events etc.
 

AdanVC

Member
Such a very good podcast. Bill is an awesome guy and he is really good at videogames as well. He is just living the dream getting to work on the gaming industry with top notch people/celebrities such as Miyamoto.

Opportunities for tougher/more general questions will come. We told you what Bill was here to talk about before the interview so you wouldn't go in with crazy expectations. We still managed to get some cool stories out of him.

Thanks for all the hard work and Nintendo coverage on IGN, Jose! :D
 

Revven

Member
My sense/feeling on the sponsorship with Nintendo is this: the only way they can contribute pot bonuses to tournaments is by talking to NoJ/NCL and it would be a very difficult endeavor to convince them it's worth spending whatever amount of money (adding to the pot) on a tournament that is comparatively niche to the general Nintendo audience. It's also highly unlikely they would use any of their own money that NoA has (their marketing money and the like) on throwing some money into the pot at tournaments like EVO. Especially when, again, they may not want to commit financially to the competitive community yet when its future is uncertain.

It's uncertain in the sense that it's hard to say whether the year-over-year growth will continue or if it'll reach a peak and stagnate kinda like Brawl eventually did in 2010 (it peaked in 2010 and then ever since then could only ever manage to get 300+ entrants at majors/nationals from that point forward). Things are looking good right now, for sure, with Melee nearly doubling its entrants count from last year at EVO but who knows if the momentum can keep going into next year.

I'm appreciative of the idea to tweet about the tournaments they're sponsoring to give the community visibility and attract potential new players to the community. However, a pot bonus would also be a good additional thing to do down the road when Nintendo feels comfortable.

What would be even better, if they are so unwilling to contribute actual money to the pot... and want to keep Melee specifically alive, would be to do a Melee HD release (using the PAL version as the base to unite the community on one version, by the way!) It would also help those new players they're attracting to the community get into Melee as well as Smash 4 if they wanted. But... that's super unlikely now given the current situation with the Wii U and NX (they're clearly shifting teams to the NX).

Maybe Nintendo will surprise us in a year. I certainly hope so. But at least their support isn't completely worthless given they're helping reaching people the tournament scene otherwise can't. Even if I'm disappointed at their support so far, I can at least appreciate Bill has a good grasp on the community and seems to want to let the community do things on their own (but again financial support would further help to foster and keep the community alive...) running tournaments and making trips to them (as players) is not cheap and isn't very sustainable in the long-term without some major financial backing for events (aka sponsors)
 
Top Bottom