I think everybody just needs to take a deep breath. In four months there will be a couple of dlc characters, a new cinematic story, and by then nearly all of the server issues will have been resolved. The netcode at it’s fundamental level seems more than playable enough. What do you think happens then when the Steam Summer Sale pops and Street Fighter V is 35% off with front page marketing?
This isn’t 2006. SFV was never going to sell near SF4 because 4 had the hype of 2D -> 3D and the long downtime, not to mention it launched during a period where PS3/360 were already heavily saturated. The PS4 is still pretty niche and just doesn’t have the same market share as the PS3 did at that point in time.
At the end of the day it’s a fighting game in 2016. Street Fighter V was never going to hit GTA4 / Skyrim / Fallout 4 levels of concurrent players on steam. But it’s got more than enough of a foundation to continue to grow, and at the end of the day I think it is legit a better pure fighting game than Street Fighter 4. The focus on footsies seems much more appealing than a focus on setups. I think that will translate to how the game is continued to be received over time.
A big bucket of initial sales does not dictate if a service based game survives. If nobody buys anything in the store for SFV a year from now, sure. That’s not going to be the case and its set so there is a potential to make money every day.
Imagine if SFV was released with horrible (i mean, really horrible) online and shitty performance, but with a lot of single players content. Yeah, casual jumps in, play the 5hr single player campaign, mess around with tutorials and then… what? They just leaves, they go online waiting for a guy with green bars only to face that even with high quality ping the game just lags, and the netcode is garbage, so you hope for patches that fix it… maybe you play some single player content and finally you just throw the game away, see ya, next assassin’s creed is on the way, bye!. Meanwhile your fighting game get patched, the online works just fine but guess what… it’s hard bringing back people to online multiplayer, simply because a community needs continuity.
I sincerly think that a solid gameplay plus solid netcode and characters variety are way more important to keep a fighting game alive than any other things.
And for now, even with a good amount of problems, SFV nails the gameplay and the netcode just fine. Characters btw is where the game is lacking something to me, gratefully they will come.
And Capcom wil make DLC forever for you 21k people… Really now? If they see no benefit to justify developing new content they won’t do it
The PS4 is niche? Something new for me? Where do you live? The PS4 is selling like hot cakes and far better compared to the PS3. This is based on sales data around the world. And on top on that the PS3 had a proper rival with the Xbox 360. Now it is just PS 4 while besides UK and US the Xbox one is far behind… And SF V don’t even is able to get even near the sales of PS3 alone.
Not even one of my friends has a PS3 anymore and all jumped on the PS4. Of course I know it doesn’t say much, but in the long term most people will jump on the new consoles…
Further more… So what has done MK X better? By this logic MX shouldn’t sold well as well. But actually is a absolutely hit in sales.
And we won’t say that MK is the bigger name. But has it done better? Yeah… Content and marketing. Like it or not… Some people like their silly challenges or some story. No matter how shit it is.
I bet if SF V would have been released with the story mode coming in June and the challenges which come soon the game would have been far better sold.
It’s nice that Capcom will give it as per DLC. But a lot of people simply won’t buy it anymore cuz half a year form now they won’t care or follow news like us here around.
There is nothing capcom can do to get that market back other then what they already have planned. They can’t turn back the hands of time so they are just going to move forward with their plan of a service.
And we still don’t know digital and PC sales yet. Is it at all unfathomable to you that 40 percent of British buyers bought the game digitally? Something that didn’t really exist at all in 2009 ( I can’t remember what PSN was like back then, was the game even available digitally?)
anyways I am done with this discussion. We are talking about something that is over and done with.
According to “sales data around the world” by June 30th, two weeks or so before Street Fighter 4 was released, 14.41 million PS3s had been sold.
There are only maybe 12 million PS Plus users, which is relevant with SFV’s new online-centric DLC model (and not even all of those users are PS4 users). You’re right that the PS4 is selling like hotcakes, but in terms of potential market it’s really still smaller.
I don’t think you can say MKX has “done better” by comparing initial launch sales considering the difference in their marketing and business strategies. It will be much more fair to compare total sales (including DLC profits) a year after launch, at which time I am almost certain SFV will be doing much better than MKX at the same point in time.
There is really no basis for this and you don’t list any downsides for having focused on those things instead of others, you just say it happens. It’s like saying ‘If street fighter had more characters, more stages, and more music the game would have more content and would sell better.’ No shit?
If they didn’t care about what features were in the game at launch, why would they suddenly be feature-conscious 6 months from now? The same kind of people who said “Oooh, a new street figher?! I had no idea that was coming out! Lets give it a try!” are the same people who will say in 6 months “Oooh, a new street fighter?! I had no idea that was even out, I totally forgot! Lets give it a try!”
According to sales data… The PS4 already is at 35.9 Million… January 2016. Does make it even worse… and so there only-centric model won’t be that good. Or do you think they wanted a smaller sales data from the sart?
And no the market isn’t smaller. And MK X proves it
But it has done better… Easily and by far. Even without counting digtal downloads it has done far better in the same time frame of the release
And marketing strategies… Yeah and that’s what I said. MK had far better marketing… but different business strategies? Capcom wanting to sale less than a contender at the beginning and hopes SF V will have long legs in the future cuz they do DLC… which MK is doing as well?
Really now?
The basis is all around the internet… Look at magazine reviews, user reviews and people talking in forums about it. Fact is… The game launched with nothing besides survival mode. Some “casuals” do want to play for fun some stuff. Or do you expect a 12 years kid wanting to get his ass owned online all the time besides having something nice to do where he actually can have some “win”. Do you expect him to talk about footsies or Ryu being cool?
It would be like Mortal Kombat XI will be released without story mode, no towers and just online and maybe something else. Same people would riot, for good reasons, as well
Do never understimate the power of rereviews by big magazines, a new nice package with some really nice trailers and promotions.
Some people for strange reasons are “going back” to McDonald’s right now after sales went down for some time… Because new marketing.
And that’s what it is all about. SALES… This simple business strategy is done for each game. CAPCOM needs them now, cuz their latest games, even Resident Evil, haven’t hit their own expections. If you think their strategy is crawling over years supporting the game with DLC hoping people will jump on it… good luck with it.
Talking about it… Capcom themselves expects 2 million until end of March.
I’m gonna wait on Capcom’s financial earnings for the year. Their fiscal year is coming to a close and we’ll know from Capcom themselves if the game is a failure or not. What matters most is if the game reaches Capcom’s sales expectations. As long as they achieve that the game didn’t fail. Look at RE6, the game sold $6.4 Million worldwide and it’s the second highest selling game in the company’s history…and it’s a failure in Capcom’s eyes.
I’d say there’s difference between players who bought MKX and the ones that bought or will buy SFV.
While MKX is a game that is mostly bought because of party-game and because of blood & gore, vast majority have already abandoned it and don’t give a crap about its current state or future. My friend for instance bought MKX but have barely played it outside evenings me and my friends spent at his place. SF series though have seemed to gather players (new or existing) that actually support and play the game throughout multiple years. MKX probably will be done after Injustice 2 or next MK game gets announced in next 1-2 years.
FGC has also grown so I’d claim there will be bigger, active playerbase in SFV when compared to IV, especially since the latter was selling assload of copies because “revitalizing FGC genre” hype, after long hiatus and including all classic characters.
This is exactly why people should focus on having fun with the game instead of acting as one of Capcom’s marketing men in suits with boards and charts.
Is the game selling 1.5 million instead of 3.5 million gonna stop you from enjoying the game? Is that going to kill Street Fighter? Ed Boon got money in so many pockets and I could care less. Big selling doesn’t mean they did everything right for the customer or that SFV cant get its own audience to sustain for 6 years
EXACTLY. People who bought MKX just bought it as a flavor of the month game. Yay Ed Boon you got a bunch of flavor of the month fighting gamers to pad your wallet with. Wooooo. Watch SFV have a larger active player base online and more tourney turnouts even with slower initial sales.
SFV is built to have a base that sticks around month to month. They don’t have to sustain themselves solely by what the corporate guys want. Which is just a bunch of casuals that make you quick money and barely play.
That doesn’t have to be the only way to sustain a fighting game especially when pc and mobile games are getting away from having to rely on discs and reviews to push sales. They are set to transcend those archaic things.
I just don’t see why they felt the need to rush the release. Even if they would’ve waited until whatever they’re going to have in March ready, it would’ve been better for the perception this game has to the general public.
If they really wanted have it out for CPT, well Final Round is the first CPT event AFAIK and that’s damn near the end of March. I would hope they could’ve gotten their more complete version out before then and then it could’ve been received well by reviewers/casuals and the competitive scene would still be on schedule.
Right now all they can do is hope the stuff they’re pushing out later on will be worthwhile to keep them afloat, but the sales won’t be nearly as stellar as they could’ve been. Too much unattractive press out there already.
Aren’t all the major reviews for the game overwhelming positive? The only place you find negativity are the steam user reviews, SRK forums, and other more casual discussion boards (gamefaqs, etc.)
9.5 IGN
4/5 Metacritic
4.5/5 PC Magazine
etc.
This place is just an echochamber. It wasn’t a good launch but no one will honestly remember in 4 months. Eventually it will go on sale and the people doing chargebacks now will buy the game again (lol).
reviewing badly because of the lack of content and dysfunctionality
Yeah the low sales compared to sfiv makes sense. The CPT scheduling really did ruin this games chances. I’m sure it’ll be able to limp along for a while, but their free release content strategy RELIES on having a significant number of new players to buy the new content with zeni.
If all they have is the hardcore audience grinding then no one buys zeni and capcom goes bust. Releasing the game broken and early to make the date for a stupid tourney was the worst possible thing they could have done. Whoever made that choice should be drilled out of the company pronto.
For people guessing at sales numbers, the easiest way for a player to get a basic number on that front is to take a fresh account into ranked. When I started into ranked on monday, I was facing guys ranked #225,000+.
Whether that number is good or not, where in the world they are, what system they are on, physical or digital, I have no idea, but we know there’s at least that many people who have bought it at this point.