Not calling it a failure until I see more concrete numbers.
Doom and gloom everyone.
I don’t give 2 shits about sales numbers. Game isn’t dead until Capcom cancels/stops producing new content and/or patches (still won’t be dead if there’s a following but whatever).
Until then, hold off on those funeral plans…
I fought in the dark once before. I am ready to fight without light again.
daily reminder that there’s no such thing as bad publicity and that public opinion is incredibly fickle
I think gaming is a bit different, when your target Audience are more than likley stuck in their chosen genre, it’s incredibly hard to get them to jump ship/spend money unless the game is incredible, especially a full price game.
All my mates play FPS, I tried, liked it, but ultimately came back to FGs after 3 months.
The only way to make a FG bigger is to somehow pinch other FG gamers from other FG games. I guess time will tell if they did that, but the online portion really needed to be flawless if they wanted those guys to make a transition.
Is there a genre smaller than FGs? Honestly I can’t think of one. Maybe Racing.
League pinched me away from SF4 @ arcade edition release. SF5 pinched me back from League 
You’re right though, people have their “game fantasies” and tend to not veer too far off course. I think a big goal behind SF5 combat system was to grab back a lot of the people who maybe couldn’t grasp the other fighting games previously released, who wanted to play fighting games but just couldn’t get it. I’ve always loved fighting games, but not having played them consistently (I didn’t have many quarters as a kid and didn’t own consoles until I could work to pay for them, and we all know how easy it is to play games a lot when you have to work XD) I don’t have the precision to 1 frame link consistently. I did manage to complete all trials in release SF4, but I never understood the footsies, frame traps, or shimmy during the 2-4 years I played sf4. With SF5 in just a few weeks I’m able to actually learn and apply these fundamentals, it’s actually a night and day to an experienced but not so great fighting game player.
I haven’t been playing fighting games consistently for 20 years, even though I started playing (and loving) fighting games with sf2 classic release… shit 30 years ago I played the shit outta Kung Fu Master which I would consider a predecessor to fighting games. It pre-dates sf1 yet captures much of the same appeal and movements.
My experience with SF5 so far has been very positive, and because of that I’m confident in it’s future.
Also - the game model of a single platform with character releases is now acceptable. It’s been proven as a solid competitive and casual game model via other games already. I’m glad Capcom choose to go with that.
It’s sad how capcom wasted all this time and money on Story Mode for June when they could have apparently pleased everyone with another barebones Arcade Mode and versus mode at launch. It honestly pisses me off how “gamers” basically did their best to kill this game.
I hope things turn around for SFV on the casual side of things, but I don’t see it happening without some kind of rebranding and another round of reviews, this time with 9/10 scores.
Blaming the consumer is silly. The launch was fucked up and gave people a reason to stay away from the game. If things like Arcade Mode, Vs CPU, Trials, and the Cinematic Story Mode were in right outta the gate, then no one would’ve been complaining about the lack of content. Most of us are well aware of Capcom’s roadmap and have no issue with waiting, but it’s quite silly to think the majority of consumers would’ve adhered to that way of thinking.
I love SFV. I think it’s a great fighting game, but Capcom has no one but themselves to blame for such an abysmal launch.
You forgot HDR, SFxT, Alpha 2 Gold and A3 Upper (which did have an arcade release on Naomi) and Double Upper/MAX. :x
Also forgot Street Fighter 2010 Kappa
casuals aren’t only bemoaning a lack of features. they are also bemoaning the systems themselves in many cases… and stuff that just isn’t going to change after march. steam user reviews often cite things like less special moves, no focus attacks, the removal of ultras, fewer characters than 4. that stuff makes sense to the fgc but doesn’t make sense to joe angry birds player, he doesn’t give a shit.
to them it seems like they paid a lot of money for less features both in game and out of game.
Not entirely true, in terms of casuals and reviews. While almost every review outside of steam/metacritic users (which is terrible) that I read cited issues with online and lack of features, likewise, almost every one said that the combat was fantastic. Yet the game got the 2nd lowest reviews of any street fighter game ever. Only USF4 on PS4 is lower, unless you count SFEX3 (which I don’t).
Well sadly after having to do my first ever steam return, since I couldn’t get GG Xrd to run a smooth constant 60fps, I knew there was no chance in hell I could run SFV without a major upgrade. Which brings me to one of the factors of low sales. While Blazblue, Skullgirls, KOF XIII, SFIV, SFXT…etc can be run on most computers. SFV needs a more powerful gaming rig, which not everyone has.
That isn’t the fault of Capcom at all though, that is to be expected with a much newer fighting game that was built for the PS4.
Everything else seems to have been said. Good to hear the combat is godlike awesome, that is obviously the most important thing. Might have to buy a PS4, or get that PC upgrade.
I’m just enjoying the game for what it is right now, new features & content is coming for sure, this is SF not like they are just gonna stop supporting the game which it will get & the game & sales will get better.
Capcom is a business & sure they would like to sell a ton out the gate but it doesn’t always go that way not like some idiots running around the internet after ONE WEEK going ohh noo this game is a fail it’s dead it’s done…facepalm.
one might ask if capcom got the wrong idea during the SF4 era due to the growth of the FGC and their capcom tour. the marketing of SF5 before the release was very concentrated on the competitive player base. on the other hand they always talked about how they wanted to make the game more accessible for new players. yet apart from the gameplay mechanics themselves there is nothing in the game which would back that up. the tutorial is laughable and the game itself teaches nothing. why capcom thought it was a good idea to regularly release the game in its current state is a mystery to me.
i have no problem with people not liking the game. I do have a problem with people going out of their way to give the game 1/10 reviews on metacritic and Amazon. It IS these people’s fault that the game is underperforming. This game is a 5/10 at worst.
Doom and gloom indeed.
Have we even seen much in the way of full sales figures? All I see are people claiming, “It’s a flop” left and right with no numbers, meanwhile metrics like the Steam activity charts show it being pretty much on par with SF4 and MKX in terms of activity there.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
So you think it should be on part with the 7 year old game it’s replacing and a game where the PC port was abandoned and is barely functional…?
What?
On par with those games *when they released. *
As in, demonstrating a fairly consistent pattern across AAA fighting games in general, not some kind of huge flop on the part of SF5 compared to sales of similar titles.
The only solid sales figure we’ve seen is that it has less than half the initial sales of SFIV in Japan. It also never reached MKXs peak players on steam and that games PC port was a broken nightmare.
MKX: http://steamcharts.com/app/307780
SFV: http://steamcharts.com/app/310950
So that’s not really accurate, as best we can tell.
As for the “half the initial sales” in Japan article, that didn’t include digital copies or Steam. While physical copies might be a bigger cultural thing in Japan - I don’t know - that was still seven years ago. A lot can change in terms of distribution in that time, so it’s hard to compare apples to apples there.