The Pokémon Company Steps Up Its Promotion of The Pokkén Tournament Championship Series

A trip to the world finals in San Francisco is up for grabs

by Thomas Whitehead Tue 8th Mar 2016

As competitive Pokémon players know very well we're starting to approach the competitive season. While the current-gen 3DS titles and the Trading Card Game will be in the contests as always, this year is a little different as Pokkén Tournament is also coming into the mix.

Having previously run some early access contests in February, The Pokémon Company is now upping the ante in the promotion of the full Pokkén Tournament Championship Series. Taking place at various events in Europe and North America, the qualifiers should be interesting as a lot of competitors will be sharing the same limited experience of the game; it'll be tough for any to master all of the game's intricacies and dominate the field based only on its arcade release and upcoming Wii U arrival.

With a prize pot of $100,000 and a place in the August World Championships in San Francisco up for grabs there's plenty to play for; the flashy trailer below makes that point clear.

The official website has a lot of details to consider, with some locations and specifics to be filled in soon. The fact that qualifiers will also be held at CEO 2016 and EVO 2016 is going to boost this Championship's profile, too.

Do you want to be the very best in Pokkén Tournament? Let us know.

[source pokkentournament.com]

Tom has been involved in the games industry for over a decade, mostly writing about it or struggling to sell Indie games. Loves reading, writing, hunting Capcom’s fiercest monsters and watching baseball.

1
Randomname19
Tue 8th Mar 2016

There's a Super Smash Bros tournament trailer instead of a Pokkèn one.

2
Zoda_Fett
Tue 8th Mar 2016

I wonder if this game will ever have dlc

3
DarkKirby
Tue 8th Mar 2016

Pokken is in fact the first Nintendo published game I am aware of that is being pushed as a competitive game by the publisher and the developer. They even have Pokken being an official game at CEO (arguably the 2nd largest fighting game tournament other than EVO) on a banner on the official Pokken website.

4
rjejr
Tue 8th Mar 2016

Did the west get a PokKen Wii U bundle or only Japan?

Nintendo did a really good job last Thursday of promoting all of the upcoming Wii U games - TP HD, Pokken, SFZ, SFG, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, Mario and Sonic Olympic game, Paper Mario Color Splash later in the year - but they didn't really promote the Wii U itself. No bundles that I am aware of, still promoting 2 year old Mario Kart 8 in the box, and they didn't mention the 4 new $19.99 Nintendo Selects games - if you were waiting all this time to buy a Wii U those 4 games could keep you busy for a lot of hours - and no price cut. $269 might be a nice little incentive to move the console as well as the games.

It's going to be hard to sell Wii U once the NX unviels, now is probably their last best shoto before clearance.

3DS is still promoting New 3DS so I'll cut it a little slack. 3 1/2 years for Wii U means we should be getting better battery life and /or more storage, maybe 64GB would suffice for more gamers.

5
happylittlepigs
Wed 9th Mar 2016

They're really hitting it hard with this competitive scene, yet player 1 has to use the gamepad?! It's totally counter-intuitive. Splatoon was not marketed as competitive, therefore the Gamepad is the only option and there is no competitive community. Smash has the Gamepad as an option, but also supports good controllers like the Gamecube controller. I just feel like there will be a lot of competitive players not wanting to learn two controllers and fight over who uses which one. This game'll flop at CEO and EVO, just watch.