interesting…you would think AAA games wouldn’t have that big of an impact on things since ppl who try to get into fighting games should know the difference between those and a game like SF. why did it have such an impact on the drought?
also didn’t see listed: The DBZ:Budokai (tenkaichi-dunno if they were the same or different series) games
Thank you Capcom for returning and resurrecting a dead genre!
I can’t speak for him, and I’d have to ask… but I’d presume because AAA games can pull new people and casuals into the genre. Nobody was buying GG or downloading doujin games except for people hardcore into the scene.
Edit@tataki: We should certainly thank them for bringing young blood into a scene that was rapidly going grey 
probably the reason why capcom is trying to make these games easier so they can compete with those type of games. why make a game that probaly gonna be hard for ppl who never played FG’s when you can make the game eaiser and make more money? gotta say tho i never thought about it that way that AAA games were a factor
As long as this young blood is not playing good games, I have nothing to thank for.
“The best” scene isn’t a “meaningful” scene?
The best players taking the games to the highest possible level- What is more meaningful than that to a competitive video game?
Of course I’m talking as a player, not as a stockholder or as a sponsor.
Does Virtual On:Marz count as a fighting game? That’s in the decade.
We’re kind of wandering off point here a little, but are you saying an aging, slowly shrinking (as players drop off due more serious jobs and families) population is better than a vibrant, growing population?
With the release of new top-line titles we’ve seen new extremely talented people come up and even people that had largely quit the scene come back.
And that’s what I’d argue talk of ‘the drought’ is about, less literally that no games were being released, more that the culture was stagnating.
2 more you missed:
SvC Chaos
NGBC
xesaie fapping at the sound of his own voice as usual 
Dude, I can’t help it that I’m awesome 
Problem: The games are too smart, too deep, too hardcore for most people.
Solution: Instead of educating the people and raising some of them to the level of the games, we lower the level of the games and bring them to the people.
So now everyone are playing worse games. Are you happy?
If this trend continues, the next generation of fighting games will have RPG leveling systems, just like what happened to FPSs.
“If [your objective] is to make the best possible SF game, then catering to novices is obviously going to get in your way.” - Seth Killian, 1998
The golden rule is that you only make the game accessible and noob-friendly by doing things that will not harm high level play. Capcom does not give a shit about this golden rule and that is why hardcore players are not happy with their products. Even if we do want the community to grow, it’s not at the expanse of what makes the game fun to US to begin with.
We can take this to PM’s if you want, or go over to that well aged execution thread and read hours worth of text on this subject. Actually I think you said the exact same thing there.
The topic at hand is whether there was a slump or not (there was).
Most games since SF4 don’t have meaningful scenes either.
Everybody hates Virtua Fighter :[
Virtua Fighter 4 (2001)
Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution (2003)
Virtua Fighter 5 (2006)
If any gems are unlocked through gameplay and not just giving capcom money (which would be the worse of 2 bad routes imo) then we don’t need to wait until next generation to see roughly what the whole “leveling system” thing would be like lol.
(Although I think some arcade game did it earlier, can’t remember the name but I think the Dinosaurs in capcom fighting jam were from it)
I pretty much agree with this anyway, especialy when there are so many none gameplay changing things you can do to draw casual players in (eg. Properly fleshed out story modes, challenges, minigames, unlockable tat like bgms and costumes (and by unlockable I don’t mean the new “get your credit card out” unlockable I see running rampant these days, I mean unlockable through gameplay), weird modes and other stuff)
was thinking about this more while out, and anybody who says there wasn’t a slump doesn’t remember the '90s.
The variety and number of fighting games was awe-inspiring, and at almost all of them there was almost always somebody willing to play you.
There were lines to play even at places like the local 7-11. The popularity and sheer amount of play even weird fighting games got is really incomprehensible by modern standards.
Edit: Iduno, you’re thinking of warzard/red earth.
If there was a slump, it was because there was disparity between the low level of the potential player base, and the level of the games. But now when the games are more simple and cater to bad players no matter the cost, suddenly the games are popular again.
That’s why it’s a part of this topic. If SF4 was a competitive masterpiece, it could not get popular.
well let me ask you, in reference to my above. Did you play in the '90s?
the 2000s were absolutely nothing like that experience.
damn!!! good thing sf4 eventually happened… because all we’ve gotten over the years are shitty weaboo fighters and terrible snk games with graphics that make wolfenstien look like an masterpiece.
In North America, there was definitely a slump in accessibility and playerbase.
Doujin games had no North American releases.
From GG Isuka to the Wii release of Accent Core, there were no GG North American releases, so that was about a 3 year gap. I can’t remember if Sengoku Basara X got a domestic release in the arcades.
Arcana Heart 1 got a North American release, but I don’t think anybody would call that title a success. And let’s not forget what a great console port AH2 was.
Rumble Fish 1 gained no traction in what arcades had it (it wasn’t really a good game anyway), and Rumble Fish 2 had no console release on either side of the ocean. RF1’s console release was again import only.
About half of the 2D KOF titles released during this time were not widely loved (2k1, 2k3, NeoWave, '94 Rebout), had no console release, and were released during the period when arcades in north america were sharply going into decline. KOFXI was the end of it when it came to people who weren’t hardcore KOFers trying their hand at the game in my local arcades. Even a few years ago, 2k2 endured in my local arcade scene while KOFXI did not.
I do think that when you have nobody to play fighting games with, it can feel like no fighting games are being released.
Unless you had a modded PS2 or were lucky enough to have an arcade nearby that was up to date, you wouldn’t even be able to play these games, let alone find people playing fighting games during this time. Aside from Namco titles they had limited exposure and their appeal was more and more niche (I love the doujin games, but I’ll be the first to say that they have niche appeal in every way. I lived in proximity of an AH1 machine in a massive asian community, and NOBODY PLAYED THAT GAME, and it wasn’t long before it was gone. HnK was great, except when the people that could do real combos scared off everybody from playing it. etc.). In the arcades around where I was during then, I’d say that the most relevant “fighting” games were those of the Gundam Vs. series. I was lucky enough to have a fighting game community to play with during that time, but it was basically all Guilty Gear all the time, and the number of players was definitely not growing by the time GGAC hit.