These leading e-sport companies are all American, in contrast to Nintendo which has to work overseas to support smash competitively (the Japanese competitive sm

These leading e-sport companies are all American, in contrast to Nintendo which has to work overseas to support smash competitively (the Japanese competitive smash community is tiny compared to the U.S., in part due to culture). How successful any multiplayer game will be is a thorny question, so I think you are more likely to end up right than the gp. Established properties can suddenly go bust. Fast followers on hot trends can reap all the rewards. Multiplayer brawlers are essentially a one-series phenomenon (SSB) that has had spotty popularity. If I had to guess, I would bet that SSBU will be about as popular as Splatoon 2. The problem with your logic is that Tekken, Street Fighter and now Dragonball Fighter Z, all made by Japanese developers, are the top fighting games on Twitch. Their popularity is much lower than PUBG/LOL/Fortnite/etc but I would submit that fighting games are simply punishing to get into - it's very difficult for a newbie to find a niche as a support character as is possible in many team games, for example. Furthermore, character balance/competitiveness issues are magnified by the 1 v 1 focus.