Doing some research I get the idea that this has absolutely nothing to do with sales. This doesn’t mean the game sold like gangbusters but it definitely doesn’t insinuate the opposite. People are just having sales like crazy. Games are dropping in price weeks after their release. I just purchased a 3DS game on Amazon, Kid Icarus. Since I had preordered it, I got an email less than a week later telling me they refunded me $10 because the price had dropped since my pre-order. This was less than a damn week of its release. And from what I understand that game is selling well too.
It would be nice to see some legitimate numbers of sales for SFxT (VGChartz is not legit). Also people need to keep in mind, SFxT was stupidly released on the same day as Mass Effect 3 which, with its own controversies, has been selling quite well.
My take: to the average consumer, this game looks like Street Fighter IV all over again with some new characters and features. So maybe they figured since they have Vanilla SF, they don’t need what they perceive to be an upgrade. THEN they see the stuff about DLC and whatnot.
I personally can care less about the game, but I hope if it is a failure that the whole genre doesn’t suffer a fallout over it. It would suck to not get a new Guilty Gear or another Marvel-engine-based game because this one flops.
ME3 also got a free DLC patch that ‘adds’ further depth to the ending portion of the game. I semi-knew going into buying ME3 and SFxT that I would be undercut as far as content goes. So i made the wise choice to sell older games I already had and ended up paying 2.95$ out of pocket.
However both ME3 and Sfxt suffer from the same problems. The company decided to undercut its fan base by giving them less of what they want with a $59 price tag. In ME3, it suffers from lack of hard core speech challenges and less then dececnt story and for Sfxt it was just plain old content mismanagement issues and to some extent gems.
In hind sight I shouldn’t have bought either titles, it just encourages the developer to continue its strain of bad business policies that I shouldn’t have to pay $59 to enjoy mediocre work. The fact that SfxT dropped in price simply means Capcom fans are fed up. And i hope social media and places like SRK will allow us to continue our waves of criticism because we shouldn’t have to put up with poor game design. Doesn’t matter if its made over seas or in the US.
While I agree that both companies suffer from questionable business practices, I have to question that last paragraph. Are people really saying either game is not worth $60 minus the DLC? That because DLC was on disc it suddenly isn’t $60 worth? It boggles my mind to know that literally 40+ hours per game at minimum is not worth $60 to people. If people’s expectations keep rising like this you can consider this industry totally fucked and games will stop being made if people won’t buy games with anything less than 100+ hours of content out of the box.
Hopefully Capcom is starting to get the message that making fans feel taken advantage of is a horrible idea in the long run, even if it can make them begrudgingly fork over more money short term. The main beef fans have with Capcom is how they handle DLC, but Capcom doesn’t seem to understand it completely…
It isn’t so much how the DLC is delivered (on disc vs download), but rather the fact that a portion of the game has been trimmed off ahead of time to be used to squeeze more profits out. DLC should be used as a response to fan demands that is developed after the game’s release, not some premeditated nickel and dime business strategy.
I don’t think it really blew up in Capcom’s face until the SFxT debacle, but they’ve been slowly losing the goodwill of the fans ever since the costumes on disc in SF4, and it’s just been escalating with each new major game.
I personally think the game, as it is, is worth $60 out of the box, but Capcom is actually shooting themselves in the foot and distorting the perceived value of the game by trimming off completed content to use to get more money out of people later.
I understand that point, but I mean “DLC” is normal practice nowadays. Not sure why its surprising. Call of Duty does it with Map packs that are 100% made in tandem with the core game, yet they sell like crazy and no one questions it. Its just because people like to make a big deal out of anything they can because they feel entitled. Games have become so good and so full of content that holding anything back leaves customers feeling cheated, when in reality they aren’t.
Come to think of it, someone needs to hack a COD disc and see if that shit is true. Would not surprise me at all. “BUY COD ELITE! GET MAP PACKS LULZ!”
Well it really depends on where you started out as a gamer to be completely honest. I started on the NES, SNES and while yes theres a huge difference between then and now. I do believe content wise these companies are falling by the way side as of today. Think about it, without the console having a online feature like many generation of consoles have not had, the developer was hard pressed to make good use of what they had to work with. Mind you that doesn’t mean bad games never existed.
I think what I’m trying to get at here is lack of innovation and originality in terms of either story and/or content. You’ll see old farts like me and some other posters here talk about the good old days where games were hard and innovative and what have you. The gaming market has become heavily saturated with multiple genres and same-old-same stories being told in different forms of media. Whats also drastically changed is the bar for visual design work and programming is a lot higher then what it was years ago. I believe the other thing I’m jabbing at here is the lack of a creative drive from developers and their studios. Skyrim, God-hand, Viewitful Joe, Okami, No more Heroes[1/2], to name a few more recent examples of creative ‘outliner’ type of games. Games that aren’t afraid to take old concepts, rework them or at least put a twist on how creative they can make the game from the inside out.
Yea i agree with most of your post. However, i firmly believe that buying their product off the shelves or online only tells capcom to keep doing what they’re doing. Money counts to them, and when you refuse to bring it to the table because of bad deals, they’ll get the message.
I don’t really pay any attention CoD (or FPS’s in general), so I can’t comment on them, but I do agree that people tend to feel entitled, but it’s a combination of the fan entitlement and the complete money-grubbing shamelessness of the developers/publishers that makes it such an issue.
At the end of the day, the customer is always right an’ all that. Capcom may think this is a smart strategy, but it’s becoming more and more apparent that it’s not.
While it seems like this is a good idea, it puts fans in an unfortunate position where, by not buying the game, they can send the message to Capcom that “We don’t want anymore games like this” instead of “We want games like this to be handled better”.
If there was a huge boycott, of, say, Darkstalkers 4, because of all this, and Capcom lost a ton of money on it, do you think they would say “Well, we just have to give fans more of what they want next time!” or put that money into something they know would be more profitable?
It depends on how you boycott with your money. Mix messages is a possibility, and can happen. However consider the fact that reps. from Capcom do occasionally look outside of their cubicle safe houses and onto online forums and Social Media basking in raging troll flames over Capcom’s ‘latest’ achievement. While we do know not all of Capcom understands english, those who do and are willing to read in between the lines can tell exactly what we’re upset about.
See, I would hope that what you’re saying is true, but all it seems their PR does is make excuses and justify what they’re doing, instead of doing anything to actually acknowledge that their decisions suck, and trying to do anything to restore goodwill with the fans. So regardless of what they’re actually thinking, they’re projecting the image that they don’t give a damn and are just gonna keep doing what they’re doing.
It’s a beaten dead horse by now, but you do realize Capcom is a business and not a charity. We can scoff at their marketing plans all we want, but their team has to get paid for …whatever level of ‘meaningful’ work they put out.
Yeah, I doubt anybody in their right mind would expect them to be a charity, but expecting them to not paint themselves as a villainous corporation set in their ways is reasonable, I think.
Man I remember when we had to grind like its a RPG to get those hidden characters, extra colors, the game’s BGM and stuff. Now its scandal this, milk that.
Some people mentioned the price tag not being worth the game in some people’s eyes. Well, sure there may be 38 characters (plus whatever DLC characters) but that doesn’t mean it’s worth it based on content alone. Worth is measured subjectively. So to me, I don’t care if there are 38 characters, the game in my eyes is being sold in a purposefully crippled state and doesn’t deserve a sale. That has no value in my eyes, no matter how much I was hyped for the game pre-release. SFxT is definitely a crippled game IMO and any fixes to the netcode or whatever overhauls that would need to happen to address the current issues outside of the on disc DLC will probably sold as a Super edition just like MvC. Everyone wanted Spectator mode online and better netcode, so what did Cap do? Fixed it, never patched the original, and then sold it as Ultimate with the edition of more characters they were probably sitting on the whole time. I never bought UMvC3 because of that alone.
On top of that, people justify the cost of the $60 with there being 38 characters and that we shouldn’t care about an additional 12. Well… do we REALLY need 38 fucking characters? I can’t imagine how hard it must be to balance a game with that many characters, stuff on a smaller scale like SF2 and SF3 are much better I think (except the blatant tiering of SF3) compared to SF4 where you have to know what, 32 match ups and if your character is at the bottom, then why even bother if 31 other characters can beat him/her down mercilessly? They might as well have scrapped that particular character and focused on bringing more balance to a game.
Even if you don’t consider balance issues with so much content being developed, as per Capcom’s excuse or Cap’s defenders, more content doesn’t always equal quality or deserve a high price tag. If they chose to develop a ton of characters but the costs were out side of the budget so they’re trying to nickel us to make up for it, than that’s the fault of the executive producers and that falls totally in their lap. They should have managed their budgets better and not expect to scam the customers to make up for their faults.
A. You can admit the game is shitty
B. You should complain about the price drop and demand it be brought back to full price
C. Who cares
Well your basically asking why its cheaper without say negative so… Capcom was merely feeling generous, and hey, they also promised no remakes this time.