 Hey everybody, welcome back to the Nintendo Prime. I just knew something right now that I've been waiting for a long time to do. We get to talk about breaking news. You can literally go down to the time stamp right quick and hop right into that breaking news. And yeah, there's a couple things I wanna talk about briefly before we get to that breaking news because I can't contain my excitement over this. First off, yes, we have moved our Nintendo Prime podcast or are slowly transitioning our podcast to a new podcast channel. There's a link down in the description in the pinned comment that I'd appreciate if you guys would do. We also have a giveaway going on on the 28th called Prime Gimmie. There's a link down in the description and the pinned comment as well to enter for that. You can win a Switch OLED bundle. There's also gonna be a bunch of other prizes given out throughout that live stream, but you do need to use that link to enter. You do need to be at the stream as well to win. So if a winner is drawn and they're not actually at that stream, we will draw a different winner. So I know, I know. I'm just so excited. But I don't know if I have anything else I really want to tell you about. I guess you know what? If this video can also get 1,000 likes. It looks like the one earlier today did. If this video can get 1,000 likes in the first 24 hours, I will do a $20 eShop gift card to someone down in the comments. So yeah, that's really exciting as well. We're kinda doing something like this for every video in the month of Prime Gimmie as we're calling it. So, whew! Without further ado, let's get to this breaking news because I can't believe it. Nintendo has done something that I never actually thought they would do. There have been attempts at this. There have been partnerships that fell through. There have been a lot of backlash from the Nintendo community. Nintendo shutting down events. What the hell am I talking about? It is now official. Nintendo will now have an official professional eSport circuit for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. And oh, by the way, it gets better, Super Smash Bros. Melee as well. Remember how Nintendo was shutting down Melee tournaments and all of that backlash? It is no more. It has been officially announced. It does not get more official yet. First up, let's show the initial tweet on this and then we'll show Nintendo confirming. So first up, this was tweeted out by a Panda. Panda on Twitter. Also known as Panda Global. They said, we are proud to announce our partnership with Nintendo America. In 2022, Panda will bring the first officially licensed circuit for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Super Smash Bros. Melee to North America. More details for this short series of events with cash prizes. This is a real professional eSport circuit, folks, to come later. We don't have additional details right now, but we do have Nintendo of America's Twitter officially quote tweeting it and adding this. Confirmed, ready your A game. Super Smash Bros. competitors. We partnered with at Panda Global to launch the first officially licensed Super Smash Bros. Championship circuit in North America coming 2022. And as I said, cash prizes. This is a legitimate eSports league for Smash Bros. Ultimate and Smash Bros. Melee. Can you believe it? I don't even know if I can still believe it. This is the company that has been refusing to let Super Smash Bros. be a legitimate eSport. It's been thriving solely on fan support. It's been yanked from several events. Nintendo has never been willing to contribute and create a full eSport around it. And just as Ultimate wraps up its DLC, here's Nintendo partnering with a legit company to make this a reality. I can't tell you how excited I am and I'm not even someone who's like a mega fan of Smash because I'm not really that into fighting games and I know how important this is. I've been covering Nintendo constantly alienating the Smash community for years and I mean this goes back decades at this point. And it all led to this. In fact, I wanna read some of the responses to this on Twitter because you're gonna see a lot of Super Smash Bros. just flabbergasted that this actually happened. Have you guys heard of Hungrybox? I'm sure you've heard of him. One of the best Super Smash Bros. Melee players of all time. He put out there, today is the first day of a beautiful future. Thank you for acknowledging competitive Melee and providing support to both scenes. I'm looking forward to what can be accomplished with both parties working together. This is going to be something very special. Just wow, remember all of this by the way is happening in wake of people acting like the Smash community is crappy because there's been a few bad apples in the community. Guess what? There's a few bad apples in every community. Did you think Nintendo was gonna run away from any possibility of this happening? Well, many people did. And guess what? Nintendo said, nope, we're just going to do this right. We're gonna make this official. I'm so excited for this. So then you see this Connor eats pants out there saying cautiously optimistic until we see what you have planned after years of negligible, negligible. I can't pronounce that. Of negative support, let's just go with that word. I know how to pronounce that. I just can't, I'm too excited right now. Too late. An act of suppression to the scene. It's hard to believe in a sudden change of heart. I trust the Panda guys, but I don't have any reason to trust Nintendo. So this again is bringing up the fact that Nintendo has been suppressing this community for so long, all of a sudden, they do a complete 180. And here we are. I can't believe I'm even making this video. That's how shocked I am. I'm just looking for some more comments here. You can just see that everyone is just, people are giving a lot of weird reactions. There's a lot of excitement. There's a lot of optimism. There's also a lot of people just telling Nintendo to f off because you know what? They have treated this community so bad for so long, but this should be celebrated. I know folks, it took decades. I understand the importance of this. I understand that Nintendo should have been encouraging this at least 15 years ago. They should have never suppressed Melee tournaments. They should have been supporting. They should have been encouraging things besides their official E3 tournaments where nobody wins any money and just gets neat little trophies. I understand that Nintendo should have been doing better this whole time and they should be doing better with all of their potential Esport games. Splatoon should have official Esport cash prize leagues. That should be a thing. It should also be a thing. You know, if arms too becomes a thing, that should join the fray as well. But it's all about the baby steps. And while Nintendo is behind in many aspects as a company, their online services isn't great. The way they're handling their classic library could be done so much better. I understand that they have even had issues with their online servers just to play games online until quite recently. Obviously they have a new server infrastructure, not implemented in every game yet. But this is the kind of change we want to see Nintendo do. Acknowledgement of the scene, support of the scene, cash prizes, actually acknowledging Esports. This, by the way, it does put Smash games up for Esports awards now officially at the Game Awards, which is also gonna be really, really awesome to see at the end of 2022 that Smash Bros. is gonna be nominated for some of that stuff. I'm just in shock. I don't wanna sit here and give Nintendo a bunch of credit for this decision because it should have been done a long time ago. But whoever inside Nintendo, whether it was just folks at Nintendo America or Nintendo of Japan, whoever pushed for this, I just wanna say from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Not only does Nintendo need positive press, not only is it just the right thing to do, the Smash community that's been trying to make this a reality for so long had practically given up. You could tell by some of the anger in the comments that it took this long, but you know what? It's here. And assuming this does not get messed up next year, I don't think it's going anywhere. I think this is gonna be around potentially for the rest of my life so long as Smash Bros. is relevant. And that matters. It matters more than I think some people can even acknowledge. Thank you to whoever helped make this happen. Thank you to the Smash community, especially those that never gave up on the dream. And good luck to everyone that's gonna be competing in this official Esports circuit next year. Good luck, man. Good luck making careers out of this real careers, not just live streaming online. Good luck, you know, winning that, getting that bag from Nintendo. Good luck. I can't wait for more details to be announced on this. We'll be covering it as the details come out. Yeah, this definitely deserved its own video because this has been decades in the making. I am so proud of the Smash community for never giving up the dream. And Nintendo, I hope that this is just the beginning of fully embracing a community that is so ready for you to bring a bunch of your games into the Esports world. I don't think you understand the immense popularity of Esports, nor do you understand how healthy this is for your company to be actively participating and encouraging it. I know it's hard sometimes when you're a family-friendly company to sit back and try to support something that could encourage children to really think they could play video games for a living. I understand it's hard to swallow that pill that some people are literally going to colleges specifically to train for Esports. I know it's hard, but it's a legitimate career for the select few. And I wish that select few luck and I just can't wait to see what happens next. And I am Nathaniel Rumpfelschance from Nintendo Prime. I never thought I'd be this hyped for a Smash video until today. Thank you guys for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.