Nintendo’s Smash Bros ban nearly cost it the biggest stream ever

For those that don't know, Nintendo attempted to ban all streams of its console brawler, Super Smash Bros Melee, from the latest EVO fighting games tournament. It's a good thing it went back on that pledge however, because it became the biggest stream that the competition has ever had.

In total, over 130,000 people watched the Melee part of the throw down, leading co-founder of the event, Tom Cannon, to say that this could have been the “most watched fighting game in history.” .

That Jigglypuff does nothing but double jump kick… boooring

Some of those numbers could probably be attributed to the fact that Nintendo created such a fuss in the first place, but not all of them.

Unfortunately for Smash Bros fans, the stream numbers were eventually topped by Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, which ended up doing 145,000 people. What this does show though, is that the fighting genre is growing nicely alongside other more mainstream competitive games, like MOBAs and FPS.

KitGuru Says: Anyone know why Melee was the game of choice and not Brawl? [Cheers Kotaku]

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