I think everyone's happy for the Smash community, because we know in the back of our heads the whole thing is held together by duct tape and it will all fall apart eventually.
The Smash game they have to play is Melee, because Brawl has less balance and is not as suitable for competitive play. And Nintendo has no plans to patch- they even distinctly want to move away from making a game that simply provides optional ways to be played competitively at all.
Then there's project M. It's a modded version of Brawl. It was quite successful in bringing Melee-balance and gameplay style to Brawl, but if you think its hard enough to keep Nintendo from kicking up a shitstorm over Melee being screened, just try and get them to go along with an essentially hacked version of the game.
So because they know it's not going to get much better than Melee, it's a constant struggle to retrofit everything. They need to mod brawl to make it like Melee. Wii controllers suck for the game so they need to use old Gamecube controllers which are wearing down over time, and not being made new- or find a suitable converter.
It's just going to get harder and harder for them to keep growing the community, because you have to do more and more to be able to play their ideal competitive version- you'll need an increasingly old system, with an increasingly old controller, or they'll have to keep hacking the new games and providing new controller options to work with it. Either way, the community members or the community leaders will be facing increasingly arduous demands to update, or retrofit to keep competition alive.
It's not surprising they have a huge turnout, given all that dedication to keeping their game alive- but can I see the community still being alive in 10 years the same way as Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter?
I have my doubts.
