But I think that's more because other fighting game publishers have ongoing concerns - where they nurture a community around a contemporary game and keep that competitive scene active so that it translates into support for future titles. I think it's not a fair comparison for people to bring up stuff like SF III. Yeah, Capcom supports that competitive community and it's an old game, but would it be doing so in 2017 if SF4 and 5 did not exist and required a player base? So with Brawl shunned by a lot of Smash players and no new game on the horizon, where's the continuity? From Nintendo's perspective, where are they shuffling the interest in Melee into? More people buying second hand Gamecubes?
I maybe buy the argument that nurturing a competitive scene translates to sales down the line because new players have a more vibrant and bigger community ready to jump into. So if Nintendo have a new Smash in the pipeline with online play and a desire to capitalise on streaming and the competitive scene, supporting the Melee scene now would debatably make sense. But right now, I don't see an argument beyond that people really, really like playing a 15 year old game and feel that a publisher should financially back that up. It would be nice if they did but I have no idea why players would feel entitled to that support.
Because it would require essentially nothing from Nintendo to make happen, and everyone can only gain from the situation. The company loves to talk about "playing together" and "about the games", but when they're presented with this wonderful opportunity born in the essence of all of that, they whip out their dicks and piss in their face every chance they get.
let's just break down how insignificant a Melee HD port would be:
- Melee is a 15 year old game.
- Brawl was so close to Melee on a development level that a group of modders reversed nearly every mechanic change simply by tweaking variables. Brawl was
literally MODDED into Melee. By fans, not Nintendo employees.
- Smash 4 still uses the same base as Brawl does, so there's no reason to believe a group of modders couldn't do the same thing.
So Nintendo theoretically
wouldn't even have to make a new game in order to provide a Smash game that plays like Melee. They could just patch in a "Competitive Moveset" mode into Smash 4, and we'd be able to essentially enjoy an official version of Project M.
Or, since Nintendo
loves branding ports as new games, they could just do that, except without the patch, remove the characters and sell it as Melee HD.
Like, there's so many easy ways to please this request that could make them EASY ass money