IMO the game doesn’t play bad, but the DLC controversy didn’t help sales. ME3 also had DLC controversy. A lot of copies were fully refunded on Amazon too from what I heard.
UMVC3 probably hurt this game more than anything gameplay related.
I silently quit the game a few weeks ago. I know, I know, I should have made a thread detailing how pissed off I was but in reality I was just disappointed. These are my (obvious) reasons this game failed in order of importance:
- DLC controversy. What was considered a way to save money for hosting charges completely backfired.
- Fighting game burn-out. Tie: 2. This game looks/feels TOO much like SF4.
- Gems
- Xbox users getting stiffed
- Art style is fucking ugly. I rarely state my opinion as fact but this game’s art direction was basically SF4’s with grittier filters which made everyone look ridiculous and inhuman.
and fit all the casuals going out to buy ME3 in there.
I might be back if competitive scene develops some more, but I think Evo’s 2v2 announcement will do more to hurt this game’s competitive development than anything. For now I’m on skullgirls and dota 2. Nothing else interests me except KOF but that game is too hard I just want to press buttons.
Just like what SNK learnt from CvS1? Before they made the abomination that is SvC?
I think the idea of a Street Fighter and Tekken crossover was appealing on paper but in reality it’s very difficult to make one that doesn’t dilute the strengths of both brands. Ono’s team brought this game to the path of failure when they concentrated more on Pandora, gems and tag team nonsense rather than on the fundamental issue of making a game that looks like it’s both a Street Fighter and Tekken game, rather than just SF with Tekken characters. SNK fans complain about CvS2 all of the time, but at the end of the day it did feel like a combination between SF and KOF games.
I don’t know how successful TxSF would be, obviously it’s going to be more difficult to do the 2D-3D conversion. But hopefully Haruda will at the very least learn that the game wouldn’t sell solely on the brands in it.
Didn’t SNK go bankrupt when CvS1 was released? SNKP that made the abomination that is SvC. They been making mediocre to awful games until KoF13. I chose to ignore that SvC:Chaos ever existed and acknowledge that SNK only made the Neo Geo Pocket Color SvC. That game was awesome
I feel that this games sales had alot to do with the mixed reception of the game in general. There are alot of people who fucking love this game, others hate it, while a majority are indifferent. DLC shenanigans aside, what hurt this game’s sells were the fact it was same days as EA’s Mass Effect and due to a Fighting Game potential Burn out. Within the span of 6 months we got quite afew fighting games and in the next few months we’ll get more(how will VF5FS do?). SFxTK came out at a time when people just don’t have alot of money…I don’t see alot of people shedding out $60 for this nor $250 for a Vita…even though I have both.
It’s true that alot of sales maybe have been due to it being a crossover or even the general buzz about the game, but I’m going to go with my gut and say the a large % of the sales were due to people liking the SFIV series and Capcom did pretty well on that long term investment with SFIV however, on the same coin dug themselves as grave as they re-released SFIV more times then they should have…and after the general backlash from UMVC3, people felt that they could wait on SFxTK for those very same reasons…and no one can really blame people for feeling that way.
I think sales figures will pick up for SFxTK when it reaches the $30-35 price range, or if they re-print it(like Nis did with hyperdimension neptuna), maybe around the release of the vita’s release o_O
This has happened before.There are stories/rumors of huge inventories of Super Street fighter 2 (not ST) for Genisis and SNES, that where unsod by Capcom in the mid 90s that were left to be destroyed b/c no one bought them. There were to many FG at the time. Not to mention people began to not trust Capcom. They kept releasing to many versions of SF to quickly.
I think your examples above are right on. I think players are wary of Capcom ATM. It has some issues, but I really like SFXT. However, taking into consideration all that you mention above. As well as the technical issues with the game at launch (It was obviously rushed.). As well as the perception that Capcom seems to have a blatant disregard of the FGC interests. I am not surprised they are in this position.
The FGC said they did not want the Gem System. Yet, Capcom still made it anyway…
Though I believe a company is entitled to earn a profit for their efforts. The DLC debacle paints Capcom as a greedy company, taking advantage of a loyal cosumer base by selling and inferior product now. Only to update it later for a price, with material available now… This belief seems only to be reinforced with their behavior over the 3 years: SF4> SSF4> SSF4AE and MVC > UMVC. Each update requiring a purchase. It makes you wonder how much of each incarnation of a game was was available before the NEXT incarnation was actually released.
Anyway as much as I enjoy the game, I am not surprised their is a consumer back lash.
The push back from the FGC on SFXT is generally just the opposite end of the spectrum compared to what we are seeing from Skullgirls right now. Many in the community are purchasing the game just to support the efforts of an independent designers trying their best to create a solid game with as much user content as was possible given for the community given the time and resource restriction they faced.
I was at a local FGC event lsst night and 90% of the players there bought the game just to support what Mike Z and team were trying to do and reward their efforts. Even if they are just playing to “tinker” around with casually. That’s awesome.
That’s in the US only. NPD numbers are US only.
From numbers I’ve seen (which aren’t official until Capcom says so), the worldwide numbers are probably around half a million in few weeks time.
I don’t think that’s too bad for a game that the internet wants to hate.
We’ll see what Capcom does over the coming months to support the game.
Pretty much, As much as I like SFxTK, I think the negativity surrounding it keeps it from being widely accepted.
Right now the Community has banned Gems(for one reason or another) to keep the game competitive. However I believe this is going to hurt the game later in it’s life cycle if this continues because of the large focus of Gems by Capcom itself. Consumers of all walks of life(Casual or Competitive) are going to reject Gems due to them no being that standard or accepted within it’s own community, ultimately hurting disk copy sales and DLC sales as well, and this is only but a part of the problem. The other half is marketing and how the community deals with that marketing decision.
I really like how Skullgirls is widely accepted in the FGC~ Capcom really needs to go back to basics on this one.
I think sales are going to skyrocket when the DLC characters come out. Ironically, if they released a 49.99 disc with all of them people would jump on the bandwagon faster than you could say Jin hates Kazuya.
I agree with this too… I feel like banning gems is the easy way out, and it will end up hurting the game as a whole…
Bad news for fighting games. I need kof numbers.
what goes around comes around…
they shot the game in the foot by keeping most of the gems for DLC and making their selection take time (when they had a lot of better ideas from the community to work with). moral of the story: don’t sell the actual gameplay system itself as DLC or your game might not take off in the first place!
I’ve noticed this happening a lot with New games. Usually 1 or 2 months after release they are like 40-50 dollars. Its nothing bad but now people who buy the game now can buy the DLC to equal the 60 dollars.
Yup.
The 9 month release of Ultimate so soon after Vanilla really screwed over Capcom…even though SFxT had nothing to do with UMvC3.
Now on every Capcom fighting game video on mainstream sites, you see casuals saying I’ll just wait for the super version or the ultimate version.
I think capcom spent too much time promoting UMvC3. If they can put characters in that fast then they should have been in Vanilla. Also i’d wait on some other capcom games like RE6 because capcom is making people buy the ending for Asura’s wrath.
Considering how badly sales aregoing in Japan I don’t the think the worldwide numbers will be anything special unless Europe really loved the game. The game is a bomb by actual numbers and by Capcom’ expectations. They aren’t reaching that 2 million number. A Super edition might help but I doubt it considering how poisonous the aura around the game is right now.
On every gaming stie you can see people saying " i’ll wait for the new version of the game" and “greedy companies are killing the industry” all the time, and the DLC controversy didn’t help at all, although i can see more big numbers in the future but not as big as capcom expected, ME3 sold 1.3 million units but is not a big success considereing how the game was overhyped as hell.
I’m pretty sure that 2 Million number mentioned in Capcom’s financial report was refering to copies SHIPPED to retailers, not copies SOLD to consumers.
There’s no way a fighting game could sell 2 million copies in 3 weeks. Even vanilla SF4 couldn’t do that. No way the 5th Capcom disc release in 3 years would do even close to that. Those are ME3 type numbers, and SFxT is not ME3.
I don’t see them making that shipped number with the game’s poor start.
No. When they release their fiscal reports a couple of months ago, their expectation for SFxT and RE:ORC were for those games to get 2 million in lifetime sales.