SfxTekken Price Drop: Implications?

Classic Fighting Games Street Fighter x Tekken
21

You sounds like the front pagers who have played the game a total of three times. I’ve yet to have issues of lag with the net code and a majority of my matches are in the yellow range. Sounds an issue but it’s being fixed, in the mean time all it takes is to mute your TV and you can play the game just fine. I can’t speak for the 360 version but after installing the game I have little to no load issues save for the occasional online match. Maybe it’s just the 360 version that got shit on.

As far as your talk on the metagame:

  1. I can count on my fingers, out of the hundred+ matches I’ve played online and offline, the number of timeouts I’ve had. The game is often much more than tag combo into run away, and I’d be pretty embarrassed making that claim when there’s several threads chock full of 30 minutes of video of little to no timeouts at a time floating all over youtube.

  2. What do you mean legit strategy in this game? Runaway after gaining the life lead has been a ‘legit strategy’ since fighting games HAD life bars.

22

Who the hell wants to practice all those? You pick one or two and stick to them.

23

That’s my point exactly. When this game came out most people I know had already picked their one or two. They didn’t have time to add SFxT.

24

Skyrim’s still 50 dollars? Staying strong, I see. Skyrim’s success shows that you don’t need aggressive anti-piracy measures or slapped-on online multiplayer to get people to buy the title new; just make a damn good triple A title and it will be rolling in the dough for months to come.

As for the price drop, yes, it indicates the game isn’t selling all that well. A 20 dollar price drop across retailers is not good; while you might buy games for cheaper prices that sold well, these tend not to be at the market pricing. Of course, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is still one of the most popular tournament games right now, and that sold even less, so low sales don’t necessarily mean the game will be falling out of style in the near-future.

I thought he stepped down because he had to go to the freaking hospital.

I guess even the sickbed can’t stop the madman. He’s like the US Postal Service; through rain, sleet, snow, or SFxT.

25

So they can stop practicing one in favor of another. I don’t think fighting games is something you get really rusty at, you know how to ride a bike and can continue to do so even after years of not riding right? Sometimes it takes a minute or two to get back into the mode, but once you click it’s back on. The same for games. I’ve never felt I was so rusty after taking a break from playing, 5 minutes of warm up and I’m good to go. So it isn’t like all your time spent on a game was a waste, it simply isn’t your focus anymore. But once you learn something, after a warm up just about anyone should be good to go.

26

Well, I guess this is what happens when you totally ignore fan feedback and piss people off. UMVC3 being released the same year as vanilla marvel, pandora/gems and the cross assault fiasco. If Capcom would have listened to fan feedback and put more effort in making sfxt this entire mess would’ve been avoided. I don’t think its fair to blame the developers, as I believe it’s Capcom’s management that is to blame. I’m pretty sure that the big suits gave the dev team pretty limited resources, forcing the dev team to reuse models and the sf4 engine. I personally got pretty shocked how Capcom didn’t invest more time and effort into sfxt considering how enormous the potential was.

Many of the flaws in this game would’ve been resolved had Capcom probably put more effort in this product. Seth Killian mentioned that throws were made weaker because of hitbox issues in chains, but instead of fixing the hitboxes they just nerfed throws. I’m pretty sure Capcom didn’t know this change would change the entire metagame, but they probably didn’t have enough time or resources to fix the hitbox issues. Their decision to just take the sf4 timer inspite of tagging, rolls and recoverable health is beyond flawed. Some of you might think the timer is fine or that people just have to learn how to play this game properly but I’m pretty sure Capcom didn’t intend for timeouts to occur this often. Glitches and infinites are obviously there because of too little testing. While the netcode is the best Capcom has ever made, it still isn’t really good enough for a majority of buyers. They didn’t add the option to choose how much input lag delay you want, which would have been good to please all non-hardcore players that do mind rollbacks. The sound glitch is obviously there because of a lack of enough testing. Oh…and lack of couch co-op on xbox.

I’m enjoying this game and I’ll keep playing it, because I’m pretty sure Capcom will sort alot of the shit out but all of the crap could’ve been avoided. I’m honestly hoping Capcom releases a Super SfxT because I think the game need helluva lot of polishing, but that again would piss ppl off. I actually suspect Capcom is releasing half assed games just to sell us the “real and improved” version later to get more money, but their business practice is backfiring and might eventually ruin the little there’s left of Capcom’s reputation.

27

This is the shit that I don’t understand. How far does the community get to decide how a game goes? The community’s complaints pre-release were about Gems, what was Capcom supposed to do just throw out the whole system the game is based around? SFxT, despite how tournaments are played, is based around these gems and for Capcom to have stripped a game of it’s main system just because of fan input? It’s unreasonable.

Hell, there’s even been speculation by commentators like UltraChen that the reason why Pandora mode, Cross Assault, Alpha Counters and the like seem so underpowered is because of user feedback. Nobody wanted an X-Factor mode, Capcom listened and they nerfed the shit out of it so we ended up with a game full of systems that couldn’t do anything for fear of fanboys crying about “OP” and “Broken”. How many times did you hear S-Kill say, “It’s really been toned down, because we felt it was too powerful?”

Yes fan input it important, but let’s be honest. Even if DLC wasn’t on disc, even if it was just announced as straight up new content, Capcom would have gotten flack out the ass for it because people would have just wanted them free, and you don’t win for losing so they went with the most cost effective route (amazingly shocking choice for a business I know). At one point user feedback becomes meaningless because what the customer wants isn’t cost effective, and in the end you just can’t make everyone happy. Should they listen to us? There’s no reason why they shouldn’t, but we have to realize that at one point they have to make an actual game.

28

Honestly, I love this game a lot and I think people not buying it because of the DLC on disk are missing out on a great fighting game. But at the same time I couldn’t be happier to see such catastrophic sales from Capcom.

Fans have spoken with their wallets and told Capcom to stop taking their money for granted. What that basically means is two things:

  1. Capcom now has to actually sit down and reflect on their recent failure. They have no choice, they need to start listening to what fans want and don’t want in their game. And the fans don’t want companies to treat them like this. They don’t want BS, they don’t want lies. They don’t want buggy unfinished games.

  2. Unfortunately, we might not see a lot of support (DLC, patches) for this game since they require a lot of money to make. And I doubt Capcom will bother spending time, money and effort to try and save a marketing failure.

In the end, it’s just going to mean more quality games from Capcom in the future. They gonna have to step their game up and win half of their fans back again.

29

Well, actually… they could have just tossed the idea out the window and focused on a great fighter. No one needs a bunch of stupid comeback mechanics like Alpha Counters, Pandora modes, and Gems. Just give the game tagging, 1 super, and let the rest of the fighting mechanics speak for itself. Why do games need to rely on stupid shit to be “cool?”

30

They could have, but they didn’t want to. I’m not saying I agree with them on Pandora mode, but I’m saying that I would have rather had a system that actually worked with the engine instead of nerfed-to-death wastes. As for gems, I think the only mistake they made their was in assist gems, I think the idea of gems isn’t in anyway offense of ‘stupid’. You want to maxamize character damage? Power gem that shit. You want to be able to take more health risks? Fortitude that shit. I think the idea isn’t a bad one, and just because it’s different doesn’t make it stupid shit because at one point tag-ins and supers were then stupid shit.

As for you including alpha counters as a “stupid comeback mechanic”, I won’t even touch that part because you should know that alpha counters have been a thing in Capcom games for a long time. Jojo’s, Alpha series, the Vampire series, all had alpha counters. That’s not a new thing.

31

I think the lower sales of SFxTK (if true) has less to do with the game itself and more to do with the resurgence of fighting games in general. I think the trend is dying down. When SF4 came out a significant amount of time had passed and nostalgia made it seem like a very exciting buy for a lot of people, and that includes people who have never touched a fighting game.

Now, a lot of fighting games have come out since SF4 and the sales are likely getting lower for all of them. People are starting to remember how high the learning curve is for fighting games, and how much effort you have to put in to “enjoy” them. With a shooter, you could have just one kill and be the worst player on the team, and still enjoy yourself, just getting that one kill is already rewarding for many people. With a fighting game, if you don’t win, it’s generally not a fun experience. So we can’t really blame most gamers for avoiding fighting games again. I don’t think it’s SFxTK’s fault that this is happening, it’s just the nature of the game genre and it’s catching up to most people.

I honestly don’t know how you could make fighting games fun for everybody and not just people who have time to learn all the little details about them. I do wonder why a game like Starcraft 2 succeeds even if it has a very high learning curve (maybe even more than SF). But then most people buy the latest Starcraft game because they want to enjoy the single player mode and that has a lot of content they can go through. With SF Capcom hasn’t put a lot of effort with the single player modes, and with that, people have less incentive to buy these types of games.

I honestly don’t know why Capcom doesn’t want to put effort in the single player side of the game. Yes, writing a story is hard, but losing the momentum they gained with SF4 is going to hurt them in the long run…it’s really unfortunate that they don’t prioritize that at all.

32

Yeah great, so Capcom add things no one asked for and people were complaining about. How could things go wrong? UltraChen were complaining about the assist gems way before release and TO were worried about how long it would take to set up gems. What did Capcom do? Nothing, they just ignored complaints and the result is broken assist gems online and gems banned at tournaments. Great result, good job capcom.

Actually it was an amazingly stupid choice of Capcom. They should’ve known people would get pissed about it and that it would backfire. The cost effective route isn’t worth it if it damages your relationship to the customer. I’m not saying Capcom has to make the game based on 100% fan input, but if you are going to ignore your fans and the FGC’s opinion then you better get your shit right. I’m still though pretty sure that a lot of the mistakes Capcom did with Sfxt comes from blindly taking the “cost effective route”.

33

So either they would have stuck the DLC on disc like they did, assume people wouldn’t hack it,and trust that people would be find paying 1.66 a character. OR, they would have kept the characters off disc, let hackers dictate how to plan their business model, and then dealt with complaints when each DLC character is Blazblu priced because Microsoft is charging them by the size of the DLC files.

Sounds pretty lose-lose to me regardless of how little or how much Capcom listens to it’s fans. I’m not saying Capcom shouldn’t give a shit because I’m part of this community and you’re damn well I want to be heard, but we can all acknowledge how finicky this scene is and understand that there was a million different ways this could have played out and I’m pretty sure all but two of them end in people complaining.

34

I can only speak for my point of view, but I lost pretty much all interest in this game when they revealed the 12 character DLC and the fact that ps3 had 5 exclusive characters. It just seemed shady how bad the xbox version of the game is, and it kinda made me shy away. Then no online pair play was shady, and I felt glad I didn’t drop the money. Watching cross assault didn’t get my interest, and I get bored watching it at tournaments. It just doesn’t seem exciting.

Now I play marvel mostly and that game gets me hype, I love how crazy and intense tha game can get, but I also love a slow, defensive footsie game in AE. I don’t know what it is about SFxT but something about its gameplay just doesn’t sit right with me. I can’t tell but no matter how much I play it with friends or watch it, it feels really alien and I can’t get sucked into it.

That’s just my opinion. I imagine the price drop is a combination of the backlash from the capcom fan community over some of the decisions made over the games release/content, an oversaturation in the market (think of how many new fighting games have come out just in the last 3 months or so). I think at this point capcom is losing a lot of there not hardcore sales base, because a not hardcore fighting game player isn’t going to drop 40-60 dollars every 4-6 months for a new fighting game *or new version of a previously released one) when they already have other ones. Think how many casual fighting game players are gonna be interested in SFxT if they already own UMvC3, SCV, etc. The competetive community was always going to buy the game to play, cause theres gonna be some money in it. That doesn’t necessarily mean a legitimate interest in the game, a lot of players just pick up every game that gets released now because its one more game for them to get in the money for.

Its a shame, because this could have been the best fighting game in a while if executed right, but it just seems like it was rushed and capcom dropped the ball a little bit. Its very apparent that certain things weren’t worked on that could have been. I mean they basically CONFIRMED it was rushed when they revealed that online pair play on xbox wasn’t included because of time constraints in that they had to get certain thigns done and including online pair play would take too much effort.

Hopefully, if it did actually perform poorly, capcom doesn’t completely pull out and put us in another fighting game recession, but instead realizes what they’re doing that making their consumers unhappy and reflect on it. Maybe sit back for a little while and just let things simmer down, patch out the stupid shit in SFxT that should have been found in developement, and just make sure the next game they release is worth the price of admission.

[S]In the meantime, Gambit for UMvC3 DLC?[/S]

35

It means you should go get it if you haven’t already.

36

Assume people wouldn’t hack it? Wth, people hacked marvel 3 so why wouldn’t they hack the sfxt disc? In the end it’s not really about hackers dictating how they plan their business model but about Capcom not realizing how bad this is for their business, because it’s not hackers who are upset about DLC on disc. They should have expected hackers to hack their disc, and from what I’ve read they didn’t even bother to properly protect the contents on the disc that well either. Had they kept the DLC off the disc people wouldn’t have found out about Capcom actually investing time and money on making DLC instead of actually making SFxT a decent game.

Btw,** it’s pretty fucked up Capcom wasted time on making DLC instead of polishing sfxt.** If SfxT doesn’t sell, how they hell are they going to be able to sell their planned DLC properly? =S

And yeah sure I get your point about Capcom not being able to please everyone, but the amount of hate SFxT is getting says a lot about how disappointed people are in the game.

37

The fg market is definitely over-saturated at the moment, I’ve heard SCV hasn’t sold that well either.

Which is unfortunate for SkullGirls, they should’ve tried to push the game out earlier (e.g. end of 2011).

38

I didn’t say they assumed or didn’t assume, those were just two hypothetical scenarios on the extreme of things. Obviously Capcom’s aware that hacking isn’t anything new, but that’s what I’m saying, either they kept DLC off the disc and the hate came from the high price of the DLC (probably 40 dollars or so) or they kept DLC on disc and just decided the ride out the storm.

As for your DLC point, I don’t know if you understand how DLC works. One, DLC is planned before anything is even started, it’s not just a ‘Oh hey, we’re kinda done here let’s add some more shit to tack on for some extra cash.’ These 12 characters were no doubt a part of the initial gameplan for SFxT from day 1, and I wouldn’t assume any correlation between how shody some aspects of the game is, with the fact that DLC exists (take that as you will). Secondly, Capcom was PAID by sony for Vista exclusives, exclusives they knew would have to be on consoles as well. We’ve dealt with time released characters for years, and this is no different.

39

did they not do the same with marvel 3?
y people going crazy

40

I think Skullgirls will do fine. The audience for Skullgirls is hardcore FG fans who buy just about everything unless it pisses them off, and animation fans.

As for the price drop, I think the resurgence of fighters played a huge role, in the sense that folks were both mad at the DLC, and had the ability to do something about it since there was alternatives.

The sad thing is, as an engine, without the gems/DLC/other garbage , SFvsTK may be one of their best effort, though it needed weaker jabs and stronger throws- it’s a good engine otherwise, and I’d like to see it used in the future for something.

The problems with SFvsTK, as a game, are fixable, unless Capcom blames the engine and dumps it entirely, which I hope they don’t do.