What if Capcom announces a game with that style in 2017 at the SF’s 30th anniversary, but not as SF6?
It’d basically be like SF Alpha and be its own thing instead of a part of the mainline series
You mean Street Fighter Legends? The fabled Street Fighter game that takes place 25 years before Street Fighter 1 featuring an all star cast of legendary Street Fighter characters? YAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!
Meh. Seems like a ball-less approach.
No, I mean the Prototype Build SFV but made into a full game
It is but I don’t think it’s smart for Capcom to take such a risk for a main game
That’s where I disagree.
As long as the gameplay is solid the hard-core players WILL play. That is a fact.
Now, look at something like MK9 or Sf4. Both of those games rode nostalgia after a BIG absence from the main stream. The smart approach to this was to come back with what people were familiar with. Mission accomplished. Great success.
After that though? People want something different. Especially with the market for video games as saturated as it is. People want NEW. It’s why MK skipped 2 decades with X, threw in a bunch of crazy but cool guest characters and revamped the core iconography and visual style a bit to shake it all up. It looked VASTLY different in many MANY key ways.
SF5 though? I’ve had people look at it and not even immediately know it isn’t SF4. It is TOO familiar. After a nostalgia-fest, you need a palette cleanser to get your casual fanbase to never feel comfortable or “same old same old”. There’s a reason COD skipped time-frame settings between sequels…it worked because it continually shook things up between sequels so it never felt like a repeat 2-in-a-row.
SFII is DISTINCTLY different from SFA and the two would not be mistaken for each other by casual gamers. SFIII is distinctly different in presentation from SFII and SFA that it also would not be mistaken by casual gamers. SF4 and SF5 though? Not distinctly different enough. Psychologically that makes people go “Well I’ve already got 4. This is the same thing”
Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter have completely different audiences.
Mortal Kombat sells millions to the casuals in whatever form the game is presented, because where it may fail in the presentation department - it can completely make up for it with the content inside. That’s why even though maybe the 3D MK games of the PS2 era weren’t mechanically the best in the series, they still provided enough content like the minigames or the Krypt so you always had something to do in the game until you unlock everything, and even then you could just create another profile within the same memory card block and just start the unlocking process over (for those who wanted it)
Street Fighter, in comparison, relies not only on its gameplay, which is most of the time great, but also on things like familiarity and presentation as well. Although SFIV was a pure nostalgia trip back to the SF2 days in its entirety (the roster, the gameplay, the minigames, and so on) - it became a huge success because it had 99% of the familiar characters they remember from their early childhood, when SF3 failed because they pretty much had only Ryu and Ken in the beginning and the rest were new faces
The SFV Prototype, although it could’ve had the same roster as current V, also suffers from unfamiliarity, because it doesn’t LOOK like a Street Fighter game. Average Joe would look at that concept art screenshot and think “Hey, is that Tekken? Huh, it’s Street Fighter? WTF?”, because it’s THAT much different from what we usually see in SF series, which is a great addition of colourful graphics and overall anime-ish artstyle, while this Prototype looks so dark and gritty and serious and it just doesn’t feel right. I do want to see a game like that by Capcom as part of the Street Fighter series, but they cannot just bet on “Hey, the hardcore audience might like it, and the casuals will follow - let’s try this out”
It doesn’t work like that, as it could kill the game completely once again like 10 years ago
I don’t think they actually expected all that prototype stuff to make into the final game. They probably had a lot of brainstorming stuff, developed the ideas and eventually adopted or discarded them. Hell, I’d say that a lot of those ideas actually got in, as SF5 has a number of bold decisions such as revamping characters looks and moves more than they ever did.
I think it’s pretty presumptuous to think there’s even going to BE another SF game anywhere in the foreseeable future.
They’ve already said they’re trying(and failing, frankly) to take a more League of Legends model approach to this game.
That means, if the game is actually successful, there’s no reason to MAKE another game. They can just keep adding characters to this one.
And if the game isn’t successful, Capcom isn’t really in a great spot to try and make another one anytime soon.
SF6 might be a thing eventually, but it’s not going to be until AT LEAST the next console generation, which sure as shit isn’t going to be in 2017.
There’s always gonna be a sequel, but they’re putting a lot into this for the long haul. As much as they can add, eventually they’ll want new systems and gameplay tweaks and have a SF6. I don’t mind SF5 lasting for 10+ years, but this isn’t going to be the sole model for 20 years. There will be a SF6 at some point.
I’ll believe that when they make a LoL2.
Does Zangief take steroids or just HGH?
Do you even lift bears, bro?!
No, I don’t.
Street Fighters gain strength the natural way… by fighting Bears, Tigers, and Sharks.
When you can accomplish such things everything else is trivial.
Except for Trivial Pursuit, truly the only way to defeat Bison is through board games!
I guess the commercial was right. EVERYONE plays monopoly. Now there’s monopoly junior!
Bison is the type of nigga that cheats in monopoly
Side note: This is only true to an extent. “Solid” is subjective, even among the SF hardcore. There was a contingent of SF players (the OG SF2 crowd, the same ones who created SRK and Evo) who refused to play SF3 for years and only did so reluctantly because the JPN played it and made the US look bad. Capcom Fighting Jam was actually very solid, but dry as fuck (and ugly) and no one seriously wanted to play it.
I think you’re a) underselling the changes in SFV and b) overselling the changes in MKX.
Concerning the latter, MKX looks merely like a prettier MKIX. Which is fine. But visually, they are not any more distinct than SFIV/V. MKX has stage interactions taken from Injustice, but that’s more of a mechanic, not relevant to the game looks. Guest characters don’t count - SFV would certainly be considered more “different” if, say, they threw in a G.I.Joe character , but I’m not sure if anyone wants that longterm.
Cast-wise, yes, MKX has a a lot more new characters. But do note that they didn’t exactly completely shake the nostalgia-tree: The first trailer still had Scorpion and Subzero. It still has Kano, Sonya, Johnny Cage, Raiden, Liu Kang, Reptile, Mileena, Kitana, Jax - i.e. the cast is still MK1/II heavy with only a handful of additions from the later ones. This really is no different to how SFV is with it’s heavy SF2 and Alpha contingent. MKX does have more new characters than SFV, but that’s because MKX has more characters, period.
As endless sequels and the failures of new properties in all types of media has shown, people do not want “something different”. They say they want something different, but when the chips are down and money’s on the line, they’d rather go with “familiar” over “new”, especially if “New” is “bad” and “familiar” is “good”. They want something “different” only when it has a huge helping of “familiar” thrown in. Both SFV and MKX follow this pattern, as did SFIV and MKIX, though the latter are definitely more on the side of “familiar” than “new”. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t count MKX as being any more “new” than SFV.
Now in the case of MKX, MK has the “luxury” of not being a serious fighting series. Boon and co. are at least trying now, as opposed to Boon’s classic modus operandi when it comes to gameplay, which essentially boiled down to “Is it cool?” and “Is it brutal?” Any actual good gameplay that came out of Boon has always been coincidence. With MKIX onwards, they’ve been more serious in their attempt at better gameplay, albeit by ripping off as many systems from Capcom (and SNK - MKX is mostly MKIX with Slash/Bust system from Samurai Shodown series tacked on) as they can.
Regardless, the point is that MK games have never had to deal with the kind of competitive scrutiny that SF games undergo. They never face the kind of penalty for getting it “wrong” like SF, because for the majority of MK players, the gameplay is secondary to the typical MK hooks: Violence being the primary one, but also story and gimmicks/mini-games are also of high import. With SF, those all take backseat to the core gameplay. Because of this focus, it’s much easier for a new version of MK to “appear” to be new and different from before when it’s not than it is for SF.
Because gameplay-wise, i.e. where it really counts in how your game is going to play and remembered in the long run, SFV is much more different to SFIV than MKX is to MKIX.
Gotta love having @Ultima around. Very well constructed post about the issue, I fully agree, and this is in fact the route Ono has stablished for SF. Add new stuff, but have a very solid foundation of classic characters and mechanics, so people find the game familiar at first even if the changes are actually bolder than they appear at first glance.