Well that is definitely an...."interesting" purchase
Sony has seemingly been trying to establish their platform as the home for fighting games though and even doing regular MK11 & SCVI stream tournaments, so I figure it was about time they made a move like this.
In any case, this can probably only mean better things for EVO; I thought the Cannon brothers would've stepped up to field it in the face but they seem more behind-the-scenes types and probably don't want to deal with the baggage after the Mr.Wizard scandal broke out.
I'm curious how Sony are going to rebrand it after said scandal because that more or less wrecked EVO, but it'll be fun to see in any case.
I find the whole 'E Sports' thing total cringe, but if this deal could in some way help Street Fighter 6 to get made, then cool.
Capcom doesn't need EVO for Street Fighter 6, in fact they've been shifting their focus on their own league, Capcom Cup, of which EVO is just one event of many and not even the most "important" one anymore the way the CC Finals are.
One persistent issue with EVO was relatively low payouts, especially for certain games. Maybe Sony can help with that. I can't say to what extent EVO has been a particularly lucrative financial success, but it does hold the FGC together, it has that importance. If Sony are thinking about revamping it to make it more "mainstream" I hope that doesn't come at the expense of excessive censorship or cutting away the hype/grassroots/trash talk type of stuff, or mass-banning players over increasingly non-offensive conduct or (unproven) allegations. That'll just reduce the value of EVO even further, they have to walk a tight rope with this.
I also wonder if this affects Nintendo or Microsoft's investments into EVO going forward, like if they'll be less reluctant to do so. Nintendo's always looking for excuses to not support the Smash community financially, this could give them another bullet point to roll with. Microsoft doesn't have an in-house fighter that's new ATM but if they followup on Killer Instinct I can't see them skipping EVO so they would probably fund for their portion for that game I suppose.
Also this is going to make things a bit spicy now: Sony owning EVO and Microsoft owning Smash.GG, they definitely have some plans for these things going forward.
Not a good purchase for consoles warriors but I say it’s a really smart move considering how mainstream these tournaments will become in the future
That's highly debatable, and also begs the question: at what cost?
It's not like companies haven't been trying to commercialize the FGC before; there was a ton of that from 2017 to 2020 but now many sponsers have just straight-up left and quite a few pro players have turned to leveraging streaming as a major income source to compensate.
I just hope it doesn't come at the cost of dumbing the games down even further, or needlessly censoring fanservice (especially if that only goes one way), or banning players for relatively harmless stuff (or unproven accusations). If they can do that and maybe design more games that play into a team dynamic or structure tournaments as more team-based affairs I think FGC tournaments could blow up even further in the future and still stay true to the scene's roots.