Oh ok. So it’s a win-win for them.
Wish I could say the same for the consumer.
It’s a shame to see what Capcom’s doing to their longtime Marvel and Street Fighter IPs what Sega has done and is currently doing with Sonic. Pretty much the same story through and through. Ignore/poorly respond to the fans. Put in worthless gimmicks. Fuck up the PR. Destroy the fundamentals. It’s goddamn pathetic. I bought MvC3 and for some time and it was fun. Ultimate came out and it somehow felt worse to me, so I just dropped it a month after it’s release. As nice as SFxT looked on the outside, I couldn’t buy into it after the inside of it began to look about as refined as high fructose corn syrup. So I go back and paid attention to my favorite video game franchise and after reading through that article I was like, damn… Sega’s no goddamn different releasing some low quality games because they like it more than the audience that actually cares how they make their games. Their target markets just seem to be the people who will buy it because of it’s name and it’s skin. It’s strange because Sega did something right for once last year with a multi-million dollar budget, but this year with a smaller budget, they just dropped the ball on something that obviously didn’t require much money to properly produce… again.
And I don’t know why Sega is trying to encourage people to buy their game across every single platform for some cheap incentive. If a game is good enough to buy over more than just one platform, I don’t want to buy it just because you started a trend just to increase your sales. I’ll buy it if I feel it’s worth my money. Are any other companies doing this? (Esp with digital games.)
Not sure why people hate on Gamasutra. It’s a good site for people who actually develop games, especially the post-mortem stuff and the technical articles.
Anyway, is there any truth to this post?
No. No it was not. I’ve been playing fighting games for a long time (since SF2WW) but I never had any serious competition until SF4, and I learned a lot from playing it. But the more I played SF4, the more I realized that, as far as fighting games go, SF4 is shit. And to be honest, I felt duped. Third Strike is my game and always will be, but I invested quite a bit of time into Sf4 because I had a lot of friends who were playing it. And some of those same friends hate me for saying it, but goddamn it if it isn’t the truth. Everything that a good fighting game should have is turned completely upside down in SF4. The game IS broken, not by any particular characters, but by the engine itself.
For those of us who ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT FIGHTING GAMES SF4 was junk. The more I play fighting games of this generation, the more i realize that the companies who make these games (who aren’t ArcSys…hell, maybe even ArcSys) don’t care about making a game that will be played in 5 years, they just want my money. And I hate saying this because it totally makes me sound like an old man and I’m not, but the more games I play, the more I realize that it’s the truth… 
hohohohoho, the plot thickens
Speak for yourself. Every game, including SFIV, 3S and ST have their faults. This doesn’t mean they don’t have good aspects either.
Back on topic: I’m not really interested in SFxTs low sales considering that it probably sold more than other fighting games. What I’m more interested in is, of the people who bought the game (like me), how many of them are still playing? I bought the game on both consoles on Day 1, and dropped it after about a month or so. I’ll hold onto it to see how the balance updates will affect the game.
i only play it with some friends on a 2 vs 2 setup, outside that i dont touch the game at all
To be fair almost everyone did think that XF was a terrible idea that worked on the game except one person. The problem is that one person had the say on whether it went in or not.
And alot of people would, SFXT is an awful game. The best part is how hypocritical people look now. Most of this site was shitting on people who even mentioned SFXT would be a bad game. Now they are all pretending that never happened.
Read the article, did not see anything wrong with it.
There’s a lot of things that put together what truly gives a game staying power in the community. KOF13’s staying power is pretty much just on the fact that it’s a solid game. Unfortunately the netcode for the game is still complete garbage even after SNK/Atlus swearing up and down that it would be better than KOF12’s. Gameplay wise the game seems solid, but there’s a lot of those key things for giving people reason to play the game outside of offline tournaments that really hurt its staying power ATM. Especially for a series that is second rate in general popularity for the US.
Pretty much this is the way I see it with each game.
STUFF
Spoiler
SFIV: The only BIG BIG issue I have with this game as far as its staying power is just the fact that it’s just not a very creative fighting game. For anyone who’s played old fighting games the game just feels very “test the waters with old characters and hope people like it”. It’s just way too obvious of a game. It was pretty much brought up from the ground up to be as fair as balanced in possible, but in a way that’s not really meaningful or allows you to be very creative. Yeah you’ll probably get a game that’s relatively balanced if block strings are weak, throws are overly fair, backdashes are invincible and most of the cast is super meticulously based around “OMG I hope they don’t do too much damage or have too much frame advantage here and there”, though it doesn’t really create a game that lives up to the creativity of options of the older games. Even the basic mechanics like dizzies and walk speeds are overly watered down.
It’s a very solid game as far as competitiveness with ok netcode and a strong player base amongst Japan and the US. It will easily be the most prominent game for tournaments for the FGC for a while. Basically the FGC’s new 3rd Strike. 3rd Strike from 2006 to 2009 was the big game for the FGC along with Guilty Gear a very close second. It was just competitive enough and easy enough for people to get into despite the harder nuances at high level that it sucked people in for a while competitively. SFIV has done the same although it’s not surprising to see top players like Nuki and BAS abandon the game and go back to CVS2/3S due to the lack of options you are given fundamentally in the game on offense and defense.
I feel it’s a game that’s hard to keep your interest in if you’ve been playing a lot of older fighting games…but if you just want a solid fighting game where the worst thing you have to deal with is just an overly balance driven fighting game system…it works.
UMVC3: Lot of controversy with this game. Firstly there’s just controversy straight up in the fact that another version was released and the fact that the game has Marvel characters in it which Marvel attached to any video game period = controversy. Controversy over which characters should be in the game, controversy over XF, controversy over if the game moves too fast to be played competitively,…it goes on and on. Then there’s just the general issues like being ANOTHER game that was touted to have great netcode and ended up being pretty shit instead.
In reality though it’s not really much different from what MVC2 used to go through among the general public back in the day. As much as people don’t like to admit it…MVC2 went through all of this crap from regular people about how it’s just a button mash game where you just spam shit and moves too fast to be taken seriously and all of this other shit. Even with only 4 characters ending up being very viable + assists the game was still played for 10 or more years.
With that said…it’s still my favorite of the Capcom fighting games? Why? Because it goes back to balancing around power rather than balancing around fairness and always allowing people ways to slip out of anything that might resemble an old school Super Turbo/Alpha2/3rd Strike etc. “bad situation”. Vortex stuff in SFIV is horribly overrated compared to some of the shit you had to go through in the old games. UMVC3 pretty much goes back to the old school “have a plan before the match starts” shit where there’s a lot of cheap shit and you have to be able to deal with it very quickly or things fuck up.
Yeah there is issue with how easy it is to do some of the combos or how long XF lasts…but at high level of play these days most of the stuff that’s winning tournaments in the game is stuff that requires work. Shadowloo Showdown especially was a testament to that with Marlin Pie’s Viper/Doom/Ammy team winning over Champ’s Magneto/Missiles/Jean Phoenix team. Both teams these days at high level play require a lot of work but both have a lot of options for winning a fight also. You can’t just day one your way into lots of victories with either of those teams but they are both proving to be players/teams that are dominating the scene ATM.
Despite some characters that are clearly top tier, the game has a level of balance and options that I haven’t seen in much any fighting game in a while. Even if a character isn’t top tier you can easily make a top tier team around them or have them just provide a top tier assist and they are pretty much viable. The amount of characters that are viable and I feel will stay viable in the game will be pretty large. People are finding out strength in new characters everyday and the game in general is just way more sandbox and open ended in pressure and options on offense and defense than SFIV.
The amount of ways you get to deal with matchups and situations in a 3v3 assist type game is unlike any other type of fighting game IMO and it’s the general hype and creativity that will keep the game very much in staying power despite being easily the 2nd most controversial game to…
SFxT: Nobody thought it could be done. Nobody thought there could be a game with more controversy and more potentially zany aspects than UMVC3. At least with Marvel people can just throw around the “well you know…Marvel is supposed to be crazy…it’s not SF”. With SFxT…somehow the crazy bar has been raised for fighting games even above UMVC3. That’s not just talking all gameplay either. It’s just flat out the most controversial fighting game since Mortal Kombat 1 and Smash Bros. Easily…period. I haven’t seen the shitstorm like this in a while. If it had blood and guts Joe Lieberman would be fucking this game up too.
Now…before I get into anything…there’s actually quite a few things that SFxT did that are pretty decent. Firstly the netcode is actually pretty solid for once being based on rollback like GGPO. Not that I’ve played it a whole lot but from what I’ve generally been hearing and the few games I did play online…it wasn’t bad. The game generally has a nice roster of characters and small things that people have been wanting for a while like tournament pauses and button config during character select are now in (although the button config is still scroll based and not input based like the more intuitive 3S OE/Skullgirls type).
Then from there it just gets wonky. The whole gem system that adds in things that are crazier than XF, the fact that Capcom basically threw 12 characters on the disc without telling anyone and won’t release them for months when you still have to pay for them, the fact that ATM the game balance seems horribly skewed in favor of a few Capcom characters and like one or 2 Tekken characters and the fact that most of the things that hardcore players did not like about SFIV are still mostly present.
That altogether makes a game that’s not easy to choke down for a lot of players both hardcore and not because it’s basically like a flashier, gimme this version of SFIV where the game is just so out there that it’s literally on like Smash levels of competitiveness ATM. People are literally playing the game under different rules at different major established tournaments and that hasn’t been heard of in the fighting game scene for YEARS. It’s obvious why people are hesitant to spend a lot of time with this game when you’re not sure if the tournament is going to be singles, pair play and still waiting for when and if people are going to be using the gems that get used online all the time. So basically more or less depending on whether you go online or play offline you could potentially be playing the game under 3 different types of rulesets. Then on top of that having to worry about people who will inevitably have a leg up on playing the 12 new characters that have been having the game for a while. Oh and apparently Rolento’s projectile freezes the game after a patch. LOL.
With all of this…the game’s staying power in tournaments and among the casual base in general seems very shaky. It could be the 3rd Strike of our era and just be that game that no one wants to touch for years in the US until Tokido and Daigo give people reason to. It could also just not be that and people just take SFIV and UMVC3 and other games more seriously. What’s going to happen? We’re just gonna have to see.
KOF13: Well pretty much what I said at the very beginning applies here. Very solid game that has most of the old school mechanics that I feel makes fighting games creative. Strong pressure on offense, solid defensive options that have clear offensive counters to them (not just sit and block), strong zoning elements with some of the characters, team based format to help work around matchups, strong throw games (hell it’s KOF you can even combo into command grabs), and just general stuff that I really like about fighting games. Why don’t I really play it much then?
Pretty much just comes down to the fact that once I heard Skullgirls was coming out and how it was going to be an old style game that actually improved on issues of old style games. Plus the other big issue of KOF13 again being another game touted to have great netcode but instead shit netcode. Great…ANOTHER fighting game over the past 9 years where you’re forced to play offline to get meaningful practice. The game’s staying power is pretty much going to revolve around the offline since the game just generally doesn’t have the character roster popularity of Capcom games and while having poor old game netcode. We’ll see.
Skullgirls: This is the game that some people said might not even work. The character designs were said to be too Darkstalkers/3rd Strike/Guilty Gear like in inspiration (extremely eccentric all female character designs that you have to learn to like) and the whole thing about the game possibly being too old school for the newer generation to care. Even articles flat out saying the game was sexist or just trying to play on the private aspects of female’s bodies (which is not really true considering how much macho stuff is in the game). Coming from 3rd Strike I didn’t really have a problem with eccentric character designs since I like characters that make you learn to like them rather than just being face value easy to understand characters (hot girl, bishounen with sword, muscle army guy etc.). We’ve seen that already. Give us something else. Which Skullgirls certainly had no problem doing.
From there the gameplay is very sandbox and old school. Throws are strong. VERY STRONG. Old school strong. Solid range, everybody can air throw, start up about the same speed as most people’s fastest normals (7 frames), can get combos off most of them, create a throw whiff if you perform them without connecting and you must stand up to tech them. Creating a game where low or throw becomes just as powerful as typical high/low games and will definitely be a game that forces people to have real high level ACTIVE defense. Not just block and poke defense that is typical of games like SFIV.
You get access to 6 normals while still being a game revolving around air footsies and assists like Marvel 2 so the footsies in the game will have an incredible amount of depth and will take a long time for everyone to fully master. So many different move properties on each of those normals and special moves also. You can even choose the team size you want so none of people having to worry about needing to know the ups and downs of 3 characters just to play competitively. The characters are designed around having powerful options like the old games, but a lot more thought was put into the general balance of their power than a lot of the older games. There is a balance patch coming but it just addresses a lot of things that weren’t intended in the first place (certain infinites, double assist invincibility etc.). The game is just flat out as sandbox as it gets.
Of course with the features it’s pretty much a winner also. Input based button config, built from the ground up for GGPO so you know you won’t have to play offline just to get solid practice, tournament pause, the game not pausing if a controller goes out of synch, being able to detect when a 3rd controller is plugged in, hit boxes in training mode, a system that allows you freedom in your combos through the IPS system as long as you don’t run down all your normals etc. It’s just made from the ground up to be interesting for people who have been playing fighting games competitively for years.
The only thing really holding the game back is just the game only has 8 characters and the game is more or less an indie game still in development. A lot of basic game features are still missing due to this and it will take a while before more people really decide to jump on the game. At least being a patchable indie game the game has a lot of room for this to happen.
Long story short…it’s obvious no matter what people say that SFIV and UMVC3 are easily the two big fighters for the scene in the US and if you like one or both of those games you’re doing alright for not pulling your hair out when going to tournaments. Despite their issues you can’t deny that both games are very competitive and do allow for a wide variety of characters to be played in tourneys.
SFxT is a game where we’ll have to see where it goes. Right now the game just seems like a fighting game version of Smash with rules all over the place so it’s very easy to see why people are hesitant to put long term investment in tourneys for the game. We’ll see if it ends up being a 3rd Strike later that blooms for people in the US after the Japanese press some good buttons in it and some Daigo Parry moment happens.
KOF13 is a great game and IMO holds a lot of the stuff that makes a game interesting and creative competitively like a true old school game…but the shitty netcode and general SNK association makes it iffy in the US. We’ll see.
Skullgirls is game that I think does a great job of retaining what makes fighting games interesting and creative while also fixing a lot of the current issues of other fighting games feature wise (button config, dealing with combo system, how to approach game balance, online netcode that doesn’t suck). Unfortunately the game is basically a released game that’s still in development with only 8 characters, no lobbies and basic stuff missing from the training mode. Hopefully with money coming in through the DLC characters and general hype that gets more people to buy it we can see a more fleshed out game that could hopefully be on the main roster for Evo2k13.
For right now though…if you don’t like SFIV or UMVC3 it’s probably a rough time for you if you’re going to tournaments regularly.
Heh, I was wondering if that article would make its way over here. Nice to see some Gamasutra love in this thread, too. (I work with them.)
Sounds like a cool gig.
The articles are quite useful to me at the very least. 
which is why tournaments are dead to me, and I will continue not to go to tournaments with the shitty lineup.
It’s a lousy article about why something failed because even though it makes a lot of assertions that sound reasonable (virtually all of which everybody at SRK has been aware of for months), there’s no proof other than “well, the game ultimately failed to meet its sales target!”. We’ve got enough post hoc arguments here on SRK already, thanks.
I wanted to pull out of that specifically the comparison between skullgirls and Capcom games.
Capcom games are overmanaged and overproduced and suffer pretty harshly for it. (How safe (uncreatively) they played it with SF4, gem debacle)
Skullgirls was undermanaged and suffered pretty harshly for it (tiny roster, huge lack of features, really bad performance problems on xbox and especially on older systems)
You don’t want the producer constantly harping on whether that feature will bring bodies in to buy the game, but even if you’re a small group making your labor of love, you need that one guy to be the disciplined one saying ‘is this a good idea, does this work?’
I think its striking because it puts the problem in a pretty good light. They’re a big company, and they’re trying to make huge mainstream AAA games in a niche genre that won’t support them… and then they decide to cut their losses (hi, MvC3 support) when the sales numbers and projections don’t come back high enough… which in proper Dilbert fashion (I keep going back to the comparison but it just really resonates for some reason) only makes their issues worse.
I should note though, I can enjoy all of those games, they’re all quite fun even as you see the problems they have… Even SFxT, although I wouldn’t want to take it seriously.
Despite the location of that post, it doesn’t seem farfetched and people here definitely mentioned a few of those points from feel alone.
It amazes me how even with Monster Hunter, which Capcom recently claimed was their #1 best-selling and most important franchise, they still can’t be bothered to put in real effort and create new, relevant content, even on a system as graphically primitive as the psp.
Capcom knows how to create a likable IP and maybe even a decent first game or two that shows promise, but they never evolve or even come close to reaching their potential. I’m afraid to even try Dragon’s Dogma for just that reason
This kind of makes me sad because why would he get all the shit when he isn’t the only person who worked on the game,nor is the sole person who made the decisions regarding the game. I even wonder does he really have anything to say about the games he works on when it comes to design or is he just a glorified PR tool.
Nevertheless, Capcom deserves all the shit they get for SFxT, hopefully they’ll learn their lesson and start making something good again.
Same reason the President gets flack even though it’s the House and Senate fucking up.