Microsoft has been busy these past couple of months. They’ve launched their latest home console, the Xbox Series X/Series S, stunned the video game industry by purchasing ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda and all of their proprietary studios, for $7.5 billion, and released the Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming streaming service (Project xCloud) for everyone with the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Despite achieving so much in such little time frame, the company has made yet another move, as it was announced that they have officially acquired Smash.gg, an esport tournament and event organizer for an undisclosed amount.
Despite now being owned by a major parent company, Smash.gg made it clear that the site will continue to run as an esports platform for any and all gaming communities: “With this acquisition, the Smash.gg community and tournament organizers will continue to benefit from the Smash.gg platform, while our team will now benefit from additional resources and support as part of the Microsoft Content Services team.” In short, this means that there will be no immediate changes to how the site runs, nor will there be any type of exclusivity with any of Microsoft’s IP’s.
Smash.gg was founded in 2015 as an easily accessible gateway for anyone to create and organize gaming tournaments. It offers both brackets and registration utilities as well as keep track of how the tournaments progress. Despite having the name Smash, the site does not exclusively cater to Super Smash Bros. players, as it has hosted events for Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Street Fighter V. They’ve also hosted non-fighting game tournaments such as Rocket League and Fortnite. They’ve even helped out Capcom with their annual Capcom Cup tournament. As for the actual acquisition, it’s an immediate influx of benefits and capital for the site, but only time will tell if Microsoft wants to utilize this as a potential venture into the world of esports.