Everything you wrote (including what I’m about to write) is nothing but “IF’S” as of now.
We don’t know if SFV will take off. The thing about LOL and SFV is that LOL is free to play. For SFV you have to shell 70 euros/dollars.
If it does take off, the current plan that capcom has with the game will pay off. Day one players will get to hoard fight money and late comers will be forced to pay for dlc to get the characters in order to become competitively viable sooner. It is what it is. I started playing LOL in season 2 and it took me nearly one year of constant playing to get all characters.
Even if casuals won’t care about dlc characters, the main selling point for them (if they stick around) are the character skins. Those bring money. Getting the dlc characters for free by playing the game is essentially a treat. Capcom aren’t actually that interested in selling them. They’re more interested in keeping you around (which we’re lured by the promise of free dlc characters if we play the game) so they get to potentially make more money off of us.
If I were at capcom, one of the first things I’d do for this plan to have a better chance of working is using the same baiting strategy that LOL has.
Create ranks (bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, master, challenger). Give players some trinkets based on their placements on a season base (one exclusive character skin to players that are gold or above, rank titles and icons, etc…). Unlike LOL, SFV is a good game where you and only you are responsible for your victories or losses. SFV is a lot more harder than LOL, so a good training and tutorial mode is a MUST.
Of course this is all speculation, that goes without saying.
For a AAA, 60$ mainstream console game, 2 million is a hit, 3-5 million is huge and anything over that, like say the 6 million SFIV did, is a mega hit.
However, that’s small bananas, in terms of users, to something like LOL, which has 50 million active players. But it’s a totally seperate market. LOL is a team based, 2nd Life, MMO kind of deal, that’s always online, where there’s this HUGE social aspect that is why it, and WOW and I guess this DOTA game, it’s one of the reasons they are so huge.
LOL is not graphically intensive, it will run on a toaster, so you have a potential of 100’s of millions of PC users to download and try for free.
This is my whole argument in a nutshell. Some are expecting SFV to work with a FTP model, a game that will be lucky to sell 5-7 million compared to one that has 50 million active players. A FTP model for a fighting game can work, see KI, but KI sells you characters, that’s why it’s making bank. Capcom is trying the opposite, 60$ upfront, then giving DLC away but hoping costume purchases will make up the difference. I just don’t see it, but yes this is speculation, time will tell, and I hope I’m wrong.
You will be. Its not even initially FTP. You have to spend AAA price just to get into the game so as long as they sell in the 3 to 7 million range they already have money off breaks. They don’t need to make billions like LOL post release, just whatever is enough to keep them profitable and keep the characters coming without forcing people to buy like back when.
It works for everyone. That guy that doesn’t wanna pay more than 60 can just grind the characters and not buy any premium content. That guy who may just want a few characters can grind for them or just simply purchase them without paying the price of another game immediately. The guy who bas money to blow will blow money
Hey, as a player, I appreciate the generosity. But as a business major, I think this idea is nuttier than squirrel poop. You’re rewarding the hardcore players, like me, who are the ones most likely to buy the DLC in the first place, and punishing the newbs and casuals, who are least likely to purchase DLC at all. Seems ass backwards to me. It’s pretty simple. So. Hey. I hope they know what they’re doing. We’ll see.
I’ll probably pay for it. I feel like if I’ve already invested more than like 100 hrs into a game it’s already worth the base $40-60 I paid.
Most new games you get these days for $60 don’t even last more than 10 hours. When you have FGs you’re gonna invest time in, I don’t feel like it should be a bad thing to actually pay for a season pass as long as we know what we’re going to get.
The majority will grind characters including myself. Why wouldn’t we? Otherwise we’d be throwing our money away and having this “fight money” pile up sitting there unused.
Yet everyone including myself, not given this option would gladly pay for the DLC . I don’t see how this anything but lost revenue and not a good idea business wise.
MK doesn’t do this, KI doesn’t do this, Capcom is certainly taking a big risk, I hope they know what they are doing and time will tell. I care much more about the lifetime success of this product than I do 30 or 60 or 100$ of my own money.
it’s not really a bad idea business wise. Essentially capcom is giving you three options.
Play the game and get the characters by grinding matches.
Get the character you want by spending real money.
Get all characters and their alternative costumes at a discount price.
To them, how you get the characters doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you stay around and keep playing the game, so by the time they launch new content, you’re still a possible costumer.
So, getting money for new characters, or giving them away for free, doesn’t matter to Capcom. All that matters is making sure you’re still playing the game, earning shit for free.
The costumes have me rethinking things. If I can only buy them with real money I feel like it would pay to just get the season pass. Because I’m betting the costumes will be 1.99 each if we’re lucky. That’s 12 dollars for the DLC characters’ costumes so really it’s 18 for the characters themselves.
The more expensive costumes are, the more worth it the season pass becomes.
I shouldn’t have to mention this but this is speculation using guesstimates and only really applies if you’re like me and can’t breathe if someone is missing an outfit.
