>anticompetitive western mindset that idealizes "stymie other people at all costs" doesn't fit a new genre of fighting game
>hyper-meticulous control schemes that would take a long Youtube class to explain all the differences between when the game is advertised as pick-up-and-play causes people to balk.
>no advertisement because Nintendo America are as Chuck would say "not real gamers" and didn't know how to sell it. It would be too much to expect a relay between Treehouse and EAD team for ARMS while they were working on Mario Kart World and, as recently revealed, Drag X Drive.
>Smash Bros. and debacles around Splatoon 2 soured the tourney scene for Nintendo so NCL also threw their arms up (pun intended)
>meta is pretty deep but the game on the surface seems rather superficial... it's a hard sell to Nintendo noobs while there are flashier games for people to hyperfixate on
>until the Switch 2 came out it wasn't an easy game to emulate (Ryujinx makes arms go through each other) and it sits in that weird narrow between already being 60 FPS on single-player + co-op, but also it's not friendly to 4 Player because you can only team-up in Grand Prix mode unless you do random
>for whatever reason Nintendo fixated around Min-Min as the new mascot, who moves like a Resident Evil tank. What's more Sakurai did a dogwater job conveying her in Smash, which is because he doesn't like fighting games in general, as we all know
>when it came out everyone got scared because Ninjara was unstoppable if you didn't understand the meta. Ninjara is a character who can't be hit if he enters shield, only grabbed and rushed, which means that there were very few outs at that time.
>fighting games aren't very popular to being with, how much less an original IP one
>it came out less than a month after Splatoon 2. It was the choice between a barebones behind the back shootan'-like without Replays, Gallery, ARMS Test, Level 6 or 7 Grand Prix, or Tournament Mode versus Callie and Marie... uh yeah.