And capcom forecasted 2m by the end of march?
Thats a pretty big flop for them.
Honestly the 7 year content plans must be a lot more light than they had initally planned. The revenue generation must beafraction of that expected. Guess fight games are niche and high risk
There is so much spin regarding Street Fighter 5, you’d think it’s a Zangief player mashing three punch buttons.
The reality is the game should have launched with the exact same feature set as the previous launch installment. That should be the absolute bare minimum for fighting games. We are in the console market now, arcades are dead, so we no longer have the arcade SF2 hype and buying the home version to practice for arcade matches.
Failing the ability to use Sony’s money to release a complete by 2009 standards game (not sub SNES), Capcom should have kept the “beta” open until the game released in a more complete form later in the year. This way they’re facilitating the eSports market, generating hype for the game release, and not pissing off the casual gamer market which is yuuuuge.
It’s difficult to discuss this online, because there’s not a lot of objectivity. Coming here and expecting to have a rational discussion about Street Fighter is like asking a fish it’s opinion of water.
What this means for Capcom?
Well seeing as how they’re claiming they couldn’t make it without financial backing of another company, I’m still leaning toward Capcom being bought out. Bandai-Namco is still the most likely candidate. Ono is incredibly chummy with Harada, and a lot of the Bandai-Namco / Capcom collaborations of the past few years leads me to believe this will be the likeliest of outcomes for Capcom in the future. They’re sitting on an intellectual property gold mine (Street Fighter / Mega Man), but are incapable of making use of those resources.
Plus Bandai-Namco is one of the few solvent Japanese companies left. Sort of how Mortal Kombat was saved from death by Warner Brothers (curse them).
This would also benefit Street Fighter as it would no longer be beholden to console manufacturer backing, as Street Fighter has never really been a king maker when it comes to playing the exclusivity card; and the franchise just benefits from having more players across multiple platforms.
If this was a new IP or a rebooted one that was MIA for a while. yeah I’d hit the panic button. But this is Street Fighter we are talking about. For a Street Fighter game to flop it has to be undefendably bad and or Capcom would have to royally fuck up on the business side of things. The only time I ever seen that happen was with Street Fighter Cross Tekken. And Capcom I’m hoping will never make such mistakes again. But it’s undeniable that this launch was bad and easily could’ve been avoided if they had simply informed consumers that the game right now is just in a barebones state to make sure tournaments run on schedule and that more casual players should wait till march when the rest of the content is added.
A small thing like that would have been a big thing for people and have been seen as a gesture of good faith on Capcom’s part. And people wouldn’t be pissy at all. And probably happily save their money for SFV in march. But the game IMO is still going to do well in the long run, But it’s launch could’ve been so much better.
No we Dive Kick out here. We dead.
What most people are missing here is the fact that in Capcom they know what they are doing. They knew that the reviews would destroy the game, and they are trying to change the concept the people have about fighting games and they are taking a lot of risk in the process.
The most you can achieve as a fighting game which can be played competitively is something like Mortal Kombat X and Capcom knows it. But as people say, casuals will buy MKX, play it for a couple of weeks and move into other things; there will be some small audience for the competitive aspect of the game but that will mostly be residual.
What Capcom is trying to do with Street Fighter V is that you play the game the way it should be played, 1vs1 with a human opponent (I’m not saying they are thinking only on competitive gamers).
The problem is that they can’t expect people to change the idea about fighting games that started in the nineties with this game all of a sudden; it’s not the lack of Arcade/traditional single player content, it’s the fact that the game asumes that lowering the execution requirements and oversimplifing many things will make people forget about 20+ years of a model in fighting games . Instead of a decent tutorial mode for each character and a deeper and better tutorial for the game explaining mixups, frames…etc they make a tutorial that doesn’t cover anything besides the basics, instead of creating a decent challenge mode where you have to practice antiairs, punishes, mixups, combos… they make you fight 80 retard CPUs and 10 skynet controlled characters to earn some colours because “once you beat hell in survival you are ready for online”.
And of course Street Fighter V will succeed as a game despite all of this, as I said, they know what they’re doing, when they said that they expected two million sold copies they knew for sure that Mortal Kombat is a better traditional fighting game, that the reviews will crush them, but the people that play this game is gonna be learning something, and making the mechanichs much more intuitive this intineration is gonna be easier for casuals to stick around the game the same way they stick around MOBAs, Counter Strike, Hearthstone…
They had two options, make a great traditional fighting game and try to improve MKX numbers selling the game + additional content, or try to succeed as a Twitch hit trying to increase and sustain their fanbase at the same time, the same model as the twitch games I mentioned before; in the long term they can make a lot more money than any traditional fighting game before thanks to tournaments, views, additional content sold to a community that is dedicated to the game (not the hardcore competitive gamers, the twitch viewers, people commenting in this forum, etc).
So far the game is succeding, we know for sure that it has sold AT LEAST 200.000 copies, and this game is increasing it’s audience every day, the worst part is almost over (an expected poor reception/no xbox launch/servers in maintaniance forever/disconnections… etc), they are going to support the pro tour, the game is very popular on twitch right now and additional content is gonna be released very soon fixing most people issues with the game.
The best indicator that the game is succeding is the EVO entrance numbers, people ignore how important it is for a game like this to be successful among streams, a gamer/viewer can generate hundreds/tousands without even notice, do you realize how much money generates for capcom if, lets say 1M people, watch the Capcom Cup and an advertisement pops up? this on top of having a well stablished player base that purchase your additional content; how much money do you think Dota generates being completely free to play?, the key here is popularity in the long term; want examples? how CS:GO was recieved and how it’s right now?
The biggest example of how important it is for games to be successful in streams is Rocket League, does anyone of you remember a game called Super Sonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars? It was almost the same fckin game as Rocket League but it wasn’t nearly as popular/succesful; streams mean a lot and when a game is good and becomes popular more streamers are attracted to it, which generates more popularity for the game, which attracts more streamers… and if the snowball keeps going it can be as huge as League of Legends.
So please, don’t freak out and support the game playing, watching the strams you enjoy, and making content if possible for the community to help the snowball get bigger.
Gee I snapped out of it thanks to you! I am going to return the game today
of course the sales arent going to be good with an early access title at full price. sfv will be fine as the many many MANY years of service have yet to come. /thread
Because of esports and finances.
the esports bit means they would have to think in terms of a season. ideal for it to be available from the start of a season. you would not want it appearing the middle. Near the end would also be fine.
then you have their release schedule vs other games and relative to their own releases…
these combine and really make their options very limited. it is a shame. imo this is very clearly because of the whole ‘esports’ push.
this is my take on it. it’s a shame that it hurts the brand for casual consumers. capcom is hoping that it pays off in the end and they may very well be right.
i think they can recapture the casual market with the esports media push. twitch is a powerful thing now.
I tried to get a refund on it after I purchased it, but I fell asleep in training mode the same night and passed the 2 hour mark. I should have just stuck with 3s.
It feels like this game had way smaller budget than SFxTekken, which is kind of sad.
Hopefully they meet their sales expectations, but the game has “for hardcore players only” reputation right now so it doesn’t feel likely.
Also hate MKX all you want, but Capcom would absolutely kill to reach those sales numbers.
Those teenagers in the 90s were in their mid to late 20s when SFIV came out. They are now in their mid 30s and probably moved on from SF or playing game altogether
SFIV sold because of nostalgia (every SFII character in it), online gaming was added, ranked/leaderboards modes, costume/DLC, and most importantly it did not force people to buy one console or a computer with strict system requirements.
SFV has a better battle system and is a more honest game but to the casual player that doesn’t mean anything. Mortal Kombat (despite me not liking the game) had a ton of goodies and bonuses in the game and a stellar story mode.
What exactly did SFV bring that’s new?
Ignorance is killing sales more than bad launch
There is a lot of it even here, and the mainstream internet is like x10 worse
One thing I would like to point out:
SFV is taking great influence from LoL for their business model. Essentially selling their game as a “service.” However, keep in mind that when LoL launched that LoL was facing many of the same problems. For example, IGN gave the game a review score of 8 back in 2009 (http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/11/06/archive-league-of-legends-launch-review) citing many similar issues to SFV’s launch such as lack of content.
I’m curious if SFV will be able to reverse public opinion and address these concerns like LoL did. But LoL had the benefit of not having all this attention so they were able to slowly address these concerns as more people discovered the game so I’m not sure if it is possible for SFV to recover in the same fashion.
Define stellar story mode. Because take away the bells and whistles and look at the story critically. It’s a joke. Entertaining I’ll give it that, but it ain’t good. With power levels shifting left and right with the character that is the main focus in the chapter being a uber god tier badass. But then in other parts they become jobbers. I.E Johnny Cage wrecking both Scorpion and Sub-Zero at the same time, but then a human Scorpion and his team bodies Johhny, Sonya, and a platoon of soldiers. And Sub-Zero whups the whole new gen Erathrealm defenders.
Mortal Kombat never had power levels. It was always been anybody could beat anybody in MK. I like that about it.
Folks compare it to League of Legends, but from what I’ve read about LoL is it’s not a purely skill based one on one game. So while you can come into a LoL match and have everything start on the same page, or in a Call of Duty grind to level up your player character, at the end of the day - if you’re rubbish at Street Fighter, there’s no way to compensate for that lack of player skill.
I’ll butt-in!
“Stellar” is something with five seconds more thought than what’s scribbled on a fortune cookie. Which is your average fighting game story.
In this case, it’s enough to distract you from the fact you’re playing Mortal Combat.
The majority of long term players for this won’t be buying shit, they’ll earn enough fight money to unlock characters and normal costumes they want and pay for nothing.
That’s why Premium Alts are $4 (which is a joke), but hey at least that might mean they put some effort into making these ones.
But don’t worry guys, the Capcom Pro Tour will save the day, never mind that 99% of people watching it outside of Evo will already own the game.
That’s what I’m saying. eSports games don’t have to really give a rat’s ass about reviews. Their competitive hype shines through what reviews can really detail. Same should happen for V (obviously not on the same grandiose scale).
The only thing I did in MKX’s story mode was let Johnny Cage get beat up.
THIS
I’m skeptical about their idea of Street Fighter as a service platform. However, at the very least, the hype surrounding each NEW character release will be what keeps this game going. People who left will come back to the game each time a new character is released. And if Capcom has their shit together with the new characters, they may sell copies of the base game strictly because someone needs DAT ALEX or DAT GUILE.
Total worldwide PC sales to this very day are at 105K, worldwide. I bought this game on PC and barely play it, the lack of 1 player content bothers me greatly, the online is terrible, it’s a laggy mess with teleporting everywhere and it takes me a long time to even get a match, then it’s a laggy waste when I finally get one at 5bars only. On PC the game suffers framerate issues randomly, the game also suffers from no PS3 & PS4 stick or controller support of any kind. There is not one thing in this game that really appeals to casuals and i’ve played SF since SF1 in the arcade way back. This is the worst SF game i’ve ever owned, including SFex on PS1 and I think the sales reflect just what a bad experience this game has been for the majority of the people that purchased this incomplete disaster. The damage has been done by this catastrophic launch where the few players that did buy this game were treated to horrifically bad online and no real 1 player content and neither of these issues has been resolved. The negative reviews hammering this game are well earned. They really damaged their brand badly and i’m completely dissatisfied with my purchase.