By abandoning the core fanbase, I mean “us,” the hard core fans…not the causal players.
Here is how adding an arcade release could hurt your sales:
(Not real figures, just numbers for the sake of explanation)
[LIST]
[]Lets say you make the game. Your budget is $100 million dollars.
[]Development costs are in the 50 million dollar range.
[]Licencing Harware costs are in the 40 milion dollar range.
[]Shipping the Arcade hardware world wide is going to cost you about 30 million
[*]total.
[/LIST]
Producing and shipping the console version is going to cost you about 2 million for world wide distribution.
Right now, you are $22 million over bugdet. You hope that you will reap returns on console and arcade sales.
Here is the problem:
You’ve only managed to sell 5% of the total arcade units that you have licensed which means that out of the 70 million you spent on Licensing and shipping the arcade version, you’ve only recovered $3.5 million. You are now at a loss of a $66.5 million dollars. If the console version sells well enough to break even or gain profit, it still does not erase the fact that you’ve lost $66.5 million dollars on the arcade investment.
No one in the business world is going to take a risk on releasing a product that may or may not make a profit. That’s just the way the business world works. They want to make you happy, but they don’t want to hurt themselves in the process.
I’ve worked in arcade and console industries. I’ve even been in the competitive SF scene here in Socal when Street Fighter 2 first came out. I know exactly what the scene was like back then and paid attention for several years after.
Here’s the bright side of things. The biggest games in the world are console-based. If capcom promotes their games there wil be nothing to worry about (even the japanese scene). Competitiveness and skill level can reach new highs. On that note lets take a look at Super Turbo on GGPO. Thats a prime example of a game thats made the jump from arcade to home, but also increased the communities overall skill level. It seems like there are just as many skilled players today as it was when super turbo was popular in the arcades. Maybe even more.
I think this can turn into a great business move. Push capcom to promote instead.
If SSFIV has no arcade release version, this is the beginning of the death for Versus fighting.
SF is an arcade game, since the beginning, I can’t believe it, this is a shame.
Arcade=Togeki=SBO=High level competition, and feedback from top players, essential to make the best game possible.
Without it, SF isn’t SF, in any case if there is no arcade version, SFIV is the last mythic game of the saga.
SSFIV won’t be mine, for sure.
I know I’m fatalistic but the disapointement is really huge.
Does anybody know if the top arcade players had reacted to this horrible interview?
I’ve done a lot of reading in this thread. Anything I could say has already been said, so I’ll try to keep this short, but not releasing an arcade version isn’t all that important.
insert reason as to why insert counter-argument insert alpha counter to counter-argument
Also, I think that the “no” option is a bit misleading. While I don’t actually think that an arcade release is 100% necessary, that doesn’t mean that I am opposed to it. If it gets a release, then 'grats. If it doesn’t, oh well.
Joe Shmoe doesn’t care whether or not the game was released in the arcades. Only hardcore competitive players that post on SRK like you and I. Guess which group of us makes more money for Ono?
Tekken is the true crack of Japan.
Oh and LULZ at Sabin coming back home due to no arcade SSFIV release. Ain’t no reason to be there no more.
Obviously an arcade release can only help the scene in that Japan only plays on arcade and a bigger global comp pool is a good thing. But people need to stop acting like online play is shit and that only arcades can breed top players.
Not in the US anymore. It’s not about arcades, it’s about competition. Comp is what breeds skill, and for a majority of people there is far greater comp online then there is at arcades.
If you don’t believe me just play ST on GGPO or HDR on XBL, the skill level in those games has increased 10 fold in the US because of online play.
The US scene will continue to thrive with the greater refinement of online play. Why do you think this years Evo was the biggest ever? Because SF4 got released in Japan? No, it’s because Johnny Street Fighter got to refine his play online by finally playing comp outside of his neighbor and decided he wanted to test his skill at the big show.
So while it sucks for Japan that they might not get to play SSF4, this is not a setback for the US scene.
Just looked at the petition.
Half of it just says anon, and half of those just say stuff like “lol” or " >_> "
Isn’t looking too hot, either way I signed.
lol that’s what i’m saying. yeah if you think about it, this could just be more smoke and mirrors but more or less directed at the united states and other areas that imported the game as we weren’t really supposed to have it in the first place.
probably much easier to lie about it than to say “yeah we’re releasing it, but you can’t have it.”
i guess you missed my other post that covered this but i’ll reiterate a short version for you here.
this argument holds true for the initial release of sf4. but it is not relevant to the arcade release of ssf4.
are you under the assumption that an arcade buying a new game has to buy an entirely new cab every time? or any new hardware at all? you know arcade cabs run on roms right?
the arcade hardware is already at the arcades, they already sold the taito x2’s to arcades when they sold them sf4.
(actually part of their pitch on such an expensive investment to the arcade owners was that new games (like new street fighters) would continue to use this hardware setup, and that they would continue to support it. they are royally screwing over arcade owners by not backing their initial claims)
releasing ssf4 to arcades means just releasing a new hard drive (what taito x2’s use for roms) and usb dongle.
you swap in the new hard drive for the the old sf4 hard drive and you’re done.
the hardware costs amount to buying hard drives (not even big ones), and i’m not even sure capcom pays for the shipping.
there are of course added development costs to releasing an arcade version (just as there is extra cost developing for both ps3 and xbox), but seeing as taito x2 runs on windows it’s actually not even that different from the xbox version.
still this software development cost is the main issue for capcom.
your arcade hardware cost argument just doesn’t really hold any water here.
btw, you’re scenario seems to imply that capcom lost a lot of money on the arcade version of sf4. (70 million dollars in your scenario? really?)
where are you getting this information? i know it’s a hypothetical scenario, but was there a reason you chose such a large number?
i don’t know if capcom lost money or not on the arcade version of vanilla sf4. i’m actually pretty curious about their profit margin for this.
I feel sorry for ryan “fubarduck” and Jason Wilson “DreamTR” because kinda I know both of them from over the years being in the community and they both put their hearts and money into the scene by openning arcades in the middle of nowhere area’s. (area’s not in cali or nyc) I hope this doesn’t hurt them in the future. This will also cause more divide in our usa community. There are people right now talking about boycotting ssf4 because their main source of comp is at the local arcade.
All I can say is WELCOME to the hell that 97% of the usa fighting game scene has to endure for the past 10+ years. It’s not a pretty place, but you’ll adjust with time. Hopefully they will make an arcade version of ssf4 and the arcade owners won’t have to pay 6-8 thousand per board this time around. The problem I see is ssf4 might have soo much suff added to the game that they might have to sell the game as a new game and not an upgrade chip for the original boards.
I mean Ono said they couldn’t make ssf4 downloadable content because it was too many changes/additions to sf4 they had to make it an entire new disc/game for ssf4! The same could be true for making ssf4Would it befair to charge the arcade owners 12-16 thousand more dollars just to keep up with the $59.99 console upgrade? I mean it would be dumb not to get it, but would it be worth it if capcom is going to make a new version of sf4 every 1 1/2 years?
With that said I hope capcom makes a arcade version and doesn’t charge an arm and a leg to get the upgrade after paying that high price for the original boards/kits. For those that didn’t know you have to buy 2 sf4 arcade boards/kits to beable to have it play 2 players. So that means most of the places that had sf4 in japan and early in the usa had to pay atleast 12g’s for 1 working KIT of sf4. That’s withou the arcade cabinet people! Now if you got the dedicated vewlix sf4 cab’s I think it cost around 21g’s!!
Yeah, capcom HAS to make an arcade release, it’s great for testing as well, once the final product comes out, put it in the arcades. Besides Iv’e been tired of going to my arcade and not seeing my fei long there, all I do is stand there and watch other people play. HATE THAT
