SFIV in Tacoma now!

Regional Matchmaking Northwest
161

I seriously think that if there is a reduction in price down to the standard .50 per play that we’d see a large influx of steady players. Bill isn’t paying attention to how far away his “money” customers live from this spot (and in turn, they won’t continue to show up if it’s $1 per play); and the one rule of arcade business that’s always stayed true, still holds true here:

“If your customer base is happy, they spend more time (and $$$) at your location.”

Put this beast at .50 and people will come out of the woodworks to play it. Having it at a $1 is an instant turn off to a LOT of people. Especially those that could potentially play the ever-living fuck out of the title and keep both the machine and the spot itself consistently packed.

162

the 15-win auto-retire is kinda weak too, but I can see why people would want it there.

163

I will be there tomorrow!!!

164

Agreed, it’s painfully apparent anytime someone who’s interested in the game gets bombed on by someone who knows how to play SF. At a dollar a lot of potential players get warded off when they can’t compete with people. I have to wonder how much longer it’s gonna be a dollar per play.

165

I seriously doubt it will stay at $1 for too long. Constant rotation is key to getting that money back. The novelty will eventually wear off.

On the realz, it costs me around $15 to drive there and that is being modest. Were I still in school this would not be possible. I don’t mind the costs, IMO it is time well spent. However, not many people out there have the similar mindset or the means to get their fix.

166

Pablo, I suggest if Gameworks gets it, I will buy time card, and I would also inquire that you and I have many drinks…that is of course if you’re down.

167

So I just got back from playing SFIV. I only got to play one game total at evo because of the HUUUGE fucking lines, I decided at evo I would much rather play NKI, Shirts, Alex Valle, Graham et. al RIGHT NOW at ST rather than play random scrub no. 256 at a game where I don’t even know the moves. I think I made the right choice.

Thoughts:
-The sticks REALLY need to be fixed. Not just the sticks, the entire layout is moderately garbage. The buttons are SO FAR apart from the stick I feel like a little kid trying to learn how to ride a bike on his older brother’s hand me down he hasn’t grown into yet. Also, the stick on the 1p side is fairly garbage, I would often be stuck in d/b when trying to block jump ins, and then get combo’d. I had to practically press u/b to block standing up.

-The game is fucking FUN AS FUCK.

-Balrog is VERY different than in ST. I had heard some people say you can play him just like in ST, but that’s not remotely possible. You can’t do d/f kickrush>Throw, in fact, his throw range seems to suck balls completely. I got a few, but only when the opponent was completely sleeping.

-It seems WAY harder to meaty people in this game…in fact, it could just be that it was my first REAL playing session with it, but I noticed I got punished QUITE a bit for trying to do ANYTHING against Sagat as he was trying to wakeup. It almost feels like he has ADVANTAGE when he’s getting up because he can choose to TU on reaction to you doing anything and beat you cleanly, or he can wakeup throw, or wakeup and just block. Contrast this to ST where if he wakes up and tries to throw he will usually eat a fat meaty or get thrown himself, or if he wakes up in d/b I will start a shenanigan with cr. mk ticks or low rush chains.

-My new main character will be Abel once I learn more with him, he seems fucking awesome.

-Brent was a fucking beast with Claw, but I feel that this will go down when all of us learn how to deal consistantly with Walldives.

-C. Viper seems amazingly crap, IMO. Maybe I will learn why she doesn’t suck farther down the line, but she seems to do dick for damage and take a lot, and she feels more like an SNK character than a well thought out and balanced Capcom character for some reason. She reminds me of Cammy with a mostly safe cannon drill.

-Mike did some sweet shit with El Fuerte, I might actually learn him sometime. His normals have HELLA priority, he punched me cleanly out of buffalo headbutt consistently!

-I have to spend more time with Dictator, he seems pretty good.

-I can’t WAIT for this game to come to 360 and Live, I will probably give up sleeping and eating if the netplay is any good at all.

-REALLY like the intricacies of Saving Attacks and EX moves and the fireball game so far.

168

Tonight was awesome, and I learned a lot more about SF4.

Claw’s Ultra is like an Air Hyper Viper Beam. If someone is jumping or spamming moves, all you need to do is time it, and there is nothing they can do.

Jumping to the opposite wall is pretty damn safe for the time being. Mandel beat me out with a lot of EX spinning bird kicks, but dragon punches seem to wiff about 90% of the time when I am over a characters head, and cross up or throw is pretty easy.

Normals were beating out EX High Claw, like Sagat’s jumping knee, and one of Ryu’s punches.

Even though I will wall dive someone to death for a few matches, I can’t get over the feeling like I am pissing people off. There were a few times tonight when I let up on the wall diving, even though it was working, just because I had been doing it for awhile and I felt like people were getting sick of it. I guess I need to get over that, but at least I can learn more of Claw’s ground game. I just don’t want people to not want to play me. :confused:

169

Howdy Seattle!

For all you guys up north who live closer to the border than to Tacoma (or Seattle for that matter), Vancouver has 3 (yes three!) SF4 machines… two in Burnaby (east of Vancouver) and one in Richmond (south of Vancouver). Hop in the BC thread if you guys are interested!

170

Man, I can’t wait for this to drop to .50, I feel like I won’t be getting any real playtime until it drops to the point that I can justify playing it consistently. Having said that however, Zangief is fucking insane.

360’ing people out of jab strings is crazy, as is whiffing his flaming punch as a setup for a 720 ('sup Mandel :D). Just gotta fight the urge to jump and meet people in the air, and I’ll be more comfortable with him (also, the parry into 720 was comedy gold tonight).

171

I’m assuming this post is mostly about me. It might seem like I’m getting pissed, but I’m not really, and if I am it’s never like “FUCK YOU BRENT!” it’s more like I’m stunned at how some situation played out, or if I mess something up execution wise and I’m just frustrated with myself. Man, if I was you, I would keep doing that shit as long as it works, it’s not like it’s you’re abusing a broken move or anything (like Geif, HAHAHA), you ARE mixing me up, and if I block it you’re not exactly safe, so don’t feel bad.

I had hella fun tonight good shit to everyone who came out. I gotta try to even the score with Brent though goddamn… :nunchuck:

172

Here’s the big problem - SF4 is expensive as fuck for operators to buy.

I do not know the exact price Bill paid, but elsewhere I’ve heard quotes of operators having to pay $5500 per kit. And you can’t play two-player with one board, you have to buy two just so they can link up. That’s $11000 right there. And those are just KITS! Then you factor in additional cabinet costs, HD monitors ain’t cheap…

I agree that having a high price is an obvious turnoff. Scrubs who get destroyed by the more experienced players aren’t very likely to see much in this game to warrant paying a buck to play it more.

If they lowered the price, they would most definitely get more people playing it. But would it be enough to offset the lost money from the people that would pay $1 for it anyway?

50 cents a play definitely isn’t happening. At that price, it would take well over 20,000 games just for the thing to break even. Before that could even happen, SF4 Turbo or whatever will be out and everyone will be clamoring for arcades to get that instead. I don’t think any of the arcades in the US or Canada that have acquired this game so far are charging 50 cents a play (Super Arcade in California briefly charged that when they first got the game, then raised it to 75 cents). A price drop to 75 cents could happen, but I wouldn’t count on ever seeing it at .50.

Honestly, I wouldn’t place the blame on Narrows for this. Blame Capcom for pushing this retarded cabinet linking system and refusing to sell the game with two-player capability on one board. If arcades were only paying for one kit, I’m sure a lot of them would be charging 50 cents a play.

173

Lord BBH: Thanks for pointing this out. We invested well over 16,000.00 in that setup. Even at the 1.00 play, I realize that we are likely to never even pay for this game. We did it for the love of arcade gaming and to see if any interest could be created with a setup like this. Capcom has made it painful to bring you guys this game!

174

No man, it wasn’t mostly about you. Nate was telling me not to let up the last time we went on Friday also. I feel like everyone gets tired of it. I just need to shut out all doubts and mix up like crazy.

Also, those Ken matches were crazy. I think every attack in both matches were fierce shoryus.

175

Yeah it was a total bitch move for capcom to set it up this way with their kits. That shit may work in japan, but over here the scene is different. Dollar games is ok with me.

You have to ask yourself why you are playing such characters in the first place. I don’t know who the hell enjoys doing repeated wall dives, but I guess some people do. Then there are those who just want to win. Regardless of the reasons you should not feel bad. If you do, then you are playing the wrong character.

176

Great games last night people. Those matches were very much fun. I actually had a lot more fun playing Viper this time around than I did Chun. I feel like I have to like, give it everything I got when I play Viper. Like when I lose, I feel like mentally exhausted or something hahahah. I’m just glad I finally understood how you dash out of the saving attack, now I’m waiting to see people pull off some crazy shit.

Brent, I think for most people it isn’t so much the walldiving as there’s so much to him you haven’t even tried yet. Vega’s always had great normals yet you don’t really use them. He’s supposed to have some good combos as well that you haven’t attempted. Granted this is your third, fourth time playing the game. Hell for all we know, that’s probably how you’re supposed to play Vega in SFIV. I just know he’s still good at zoning but now he’s got some nice combos. But yeah lol, that Ken mirror match I had with that guy was real nasty. I felt nasty being apart of it, I can only imagine how bad it was for everybody watching.

My highlight of the night, was when some random guy did ultra to cheese my Ken, then like the very next second I ultra’d and ganked him. That was tight as hell.

177

Oh, I’m fully aware of why those machines cost roughly 35k after all is said and done, but the reality is that this game was never going to make it’s money back to begin with given the arcade industry and what level it’s at now a days (and Bill must’ve known this).

The difference herein is that you have roughly 6-8 months, give or take for this game to make as much money as possible before the console release hits. However, the idea is to continually pull in players in an arcade and at $1 per play that won’t happen anytime soon. So in the end run, only the hardcore dedicated people will play - but even then that will taper off given the location and all the other variables associated with getting there.

The best thing for Bill to do is drop a chunk off the initial price, which will not only give the long term players a reason to come back constantly - but it will get the average joe to drop coin in your box often. These two factors right here will guarantee well over 500-600 per week in revenue (back when TTT/MvC2 were hot - we’d pull in around 1k per week at the Tac Mall arcade).

It also must be noted that Bill will easily make cash AFTER the console release, as even with however good the PSN/XBL experience is, there’s always that urge to play on a physical machine. For example, think about the fact that after the console release; the lower end players will have a chance to dick around and learn stuff at home, and when they actually go out they’ll have a higher confidence level and want to play local people at a hub/hotspot that has this title. That’s more money for the machine right there, even after the initial 6-8 month run (granted, it’s a lower end chance - but the idea is still a sound option), and has been seen countless times with other fighters once the home version hits.

In the end, I’m not “blaming” anyone, as Capcom has their industry (jap arcade) to deal with and people who imported this title KNEW that there was almost zero chance for the cab to pay itself off (which is fine, considering that other games [for example in Narrows/Acme] are fully paid off and keep making money, most of which can easily cushion the blow of any monetary loss from SF4) given the high initial cost/import fees. The trick here is to neatly adjust your prices to match what the consumer needs, and what point I’m making is that unless we all hit the lotto - I don’t see a massive resurgence wherein we’re all playing SF4 after work everyday happening any time soon with the game still set at $1 per play.

I mean sure, this game could prove me 100% wrong - but every single time a fighter has come out for more than .50 (not counting GW arcades)in this area, it’s had issues with people not playing it, and then it randomly vanishes from the locale in short order.

178

If it drops to $.50 casual people still won’t play it because hardcore will be crowding the machine all the time. And the only thing that needs to happen for the game to make money is someone to be putting the next credit in after the previous person lost. That doesn’t really happen any faster with lower cost. It does happen faster with lower round counts, but do you want that? I don’t think so.

$1 is fine. Hell, it’s probably not even enough. Matches in SF4 take a long time, which is great because 2 out of 3 doesn’t feel like I’m being shortchanged most of the time. Except with Zangief. LOL

Anyway I’ve been too busy to go out there lately but I’ll probably be able to tonight.

179

The casual people will play it, as they always do whenever a game is hot (unless it’s overpriced). Ask Mandel how many times he saw random people turned down by the price last night. Granted, it won’t be like a “holy crap it’s .50 lets have every scrub jump on the game 24/7”, but there will be alot more people apt to play this title at a lower cost, regardless of their skill level (and, it’s not as if tourney level players will be there 24/7 either, leaving plenty of windows open for lower end players to show up and have fun at a more efficient price).

If you think Bill is going to try and jew people with lower round counts then you’re out of your mind. It’s already at 2 of 3, and there’s no way he’d go lower than that (even if he did drop the price) as it’s the standard for fighting games and he’s respected that for more years than I can count.

180

Okay, do the math. Tekken 5 cabinet comparison. Tekken 5 cabinet was 7500.00. At 75 cent play, then to 50 cents after console release, we barely have recovered the initial cost after cost of DR upgrade. Over double was spent on this setup, and only charging an extra quarter. Also, it should be noted that the average game times are running 7 minutes, way more than the average Tekken 5 times. Actually, this is cheaper per minute to play on average than Tekken 5 was! I shit you not.
Yes, we knew full well that recovering on this game was a tough proposition. It is our commitment to arcade gaming that brought this about. Besides, this old man enjoys bringing you all some much needed arcade excitement. Most other arcade operators have given up on the fighting game sector. The sad thing, arcade games are being squeezed out by a diminishing market and new manufacture sales practices. Capcom is only using this arcade title as a pre release hype for the console version, hence why they are not concerned with market penetration with the arcade release.

By the way, new competition sticks and buttons were just installed this morning. Let us know if you like them.

Bill