I know this has been brought up many times, and i'm just hopefully something similar is implemented in MKX and NRS can be the Pioneers in the FGC. What i'm talking about is eSports Support from the Developer/Publisher. take a look at this Article by Ign if you have a chance and you'll have a clue as to what i'm talking about.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/01/15/1-in-10-developers-are-making-an-esport-game
This article is great in showing the Rise in eSports in gaming as a whole. But why is the FGC the most poverty of all the gaming Genres even though its one of the most IF NOT THE OLDEST competitive scene of all. lets take a look at other genre's real quick
-MOBA
Dota 2, LoL and Smite round out this list and are the biggest Esports title Currently. the earliest you have seen these games being competitive is early 2000's where the Mod for warcraft 3, Defense of the ancients was made. Before that it was an RTS. fast forward 2009 with League of legends and later Dota 2 and you have the biggest games of recent memory with LoL having 64 million unique players online every month and dota 2 with 10 mil. now these are free to play games but i'll tell you why that doesn't matter later on. Dota 2 had a $10,000,000 tournament last july. most of it was funded by the Community and pretty much made the Blueprint for future Funding in the realm of eSports IMO. all of these games are supported for eSports by the developer and even fund these tournaments. they have in game support for tournaments and you can even purchase event tickets to watch the game on your dota client.
prime example of what could be done
-Shooters
Right now CS:GO, COD and Halo are the main shooting eSports games. i Came from the Halo Community and its the scene i know most about. COD has had $1,000,000 tournaments for like the past few years now every year called Cod Championships. Halo was the first MLG flagship title and many top players received 3 yr $250k contracts for MLG playing halo 2. the HCS currently Being supported by 343i is brilliant giving grass root tournaments the ability to hold sponsored tournament with a playoff at the end of the year. COD is supported each year with COD championships made possibly by activision and each developer always incorporates eSports as a focus for the past few titles. CS:GO is also huge especially internationally. Valve always supports the game just like dota and the prize pots for CS:GO are always huge. CS:GO also has in game tournament support and Halo 5 has spectator mode so anyone can watch a series going down on their xbone.
-RTS
Currently the most popular game in this genre is Starcraft 2. this is the closest genre to fighting games because its a 1v1 fight. i don't know to much about the Competitive starcraft community but i do know MLG still holds StarCraft 2 tournaments and invites the best players from Korea. for a non team game the pots are pretty big compared to Fighting games with top SC2 players making hundreds of thousands of dollars in tournament winnings. Star Craft is supported by blizzard for eSports as well.
If you read everything above you see there are a lot in Common and i'll past this data from the top 100 prize pools for tournaments ever.
http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments
Every single tournament here out $'s every EVO ever held by a large Margin and evo is for MULTIPLE Fighting games, these are all just one game events for a few winners, while EVO had $100k total prize for a bunch of different winners in different games. This is the first year a huge support from Capcom will happen with Capcup being $500k in winnings across the season. all the other fighting games will still be stagnant unless we get Developer and/or Publisher Support to make NRS games an eSports title.
My Solution
Why do Companies make video games? for money right? without profit there wouldn't be an MKX or LoL (indie games are different lets not talk about those). do you guys know how much Valve made by making The Compendium last year? it was estimated over $20mil and thats after the $10mil payout to the winners and the production cost and such. (can't find the article where i read it from) if you guys don't know what the Dota 2 Compendium is click here.
http://www.dota2.com/international/compendium/
Basically it was like a kickstarter of sorts for there biggest Tournament ever. they just released stuff like items and Costumes and such for a price of $9.99. and every time someone bought that $2.50 was added to the pot of their tournament. its so genius and everytime a milestone was reached more stuff was added until the prize pot became over $10,000,000.00. Now i'm not saying Copy Valve NRS and i know its a little wishful thinking that something like this could be pulled off, but wouldn't it benefit WB and NRS if they released something Similar? for MKX get the EVO Costume Pack for $5. give $1 to the pot bonus for EVO or even an NRS Cup or something. not only will people buy because new costumes, but you will also get Supporters for the tournament to buy it and Publicity for releasing something like this. the more prize money and Production goes toward this, the more sales MKX gets. its a never ending Cycle, time and time again, the More Support the Devs give towards eSports and the Community the more they get in return. I Know NRS/WB aren't stupid, they probably weighed their Options and have already ran the Numbers and yadayada. Capcom can do it, i think NRS/WB has the ability too. not only that but they can show in game tournament footage to promote it, get Sponsorships (i'll gladly run no blood or no fatalities all day to see this happen) and get that WB Support too.
is this all wishful thinking? will this ever happen? look at Boxing its a 1v1 Sport that is still super Popular, MMA as well, its not all about Team Sports so why can't Fighting games Find success Similarly? all the genres i listed above are all supported heavily by the makers of the game for eSports, i think NRS can too.
Also INB4 this will never happen, get a job stop trying to beat a dead horse.....we don't need your negativity here. take that Opinion write it down on a piece of paper and mail it to IDGAF town, NY 11207.