That’s just dumb, even if SFV sold massively it still wouldn’t have seen a sequel for years because the game was always meant to have a long development and a long stay for the competitive scene and the esports project Capcom has, the one that you are completely ignoring because you think it’s a niche even as Capcom continues to repeat that they consider esports one of their most important investments.
This is just being completely ignorant about how competitive fighting games development work.
Then Capcom itself is delusional. In their own financial reports they clearly think that long term games aimed at esports are the way to go, and games that last for mere two years is not what they want.
MKX stopped being remotely relevant in 2016, this is how the yearly viewership on Twitch for SFV looks like compared to MKX. And this viewership has financial and economic implication since it moves sponsors and esports money.
How can a series with no viewership at all be considered premiere at anything?
Street Fighter and Tekken currently share the premiere over the genre as they’re the only series that managed to unite solid sales and popularity among general gamers with a solid competitive scene, the one thing that Mortal Kombat lacks. Out of these two Street Fighter’s tournament scene is generally bigger, but Tekken is not awfully far.
SFV team did so much bullshit on multiple levels lol, there are so many things they did wrong (and keep doing)
Whatever SFV achieved is in great part thanks to brand having an history of loving fans
On other hand i see many hoping for an ambitius SF6
Not sure if i want it, actually more inclined to think i will get a better SF if it stay “side-project” as somebody defined it, just with more old school love/respect for quality and way less SFVish “bullshit on multiple levels lol”
Again SFV did SO many things wrong and still someway sold a decent number through (deserved) internet shitstorm, imagine if they did’nt gone full retard every 2 weeks LOL
If “ambitius” SF is to follow what modern capcom tend to do (shit on theyr tradition and suck dicks) i don’t want ambitius SF
If this is ambitius SF
That is a STUPID business model. Major games do not exist on a trickle of DLC money over years and years and years. It is not a freemium game with a model to support it. It is not an MMO. It is not some phenomenon crushing ratings and getting insane sponsorships and viewership and contracts.
That is not reality.
This is like pretending Magic the Gathering could survive entirely on ONE SET RELEASE with a few alternate art card releases over the years that follow because of it’s competitive scene. Yup! We nailed it guys! Mercadian Masques was so good that we’re supporting it for half a decade! 6 months from now will see the release of 10 more cards and then another 10 cards every 6 months after that to support it! Our competitive scene is gonna be lit and we’ll be rolling in cash!
No.
If SF could release a sequel every 2 or 3 years THEY WOULD. They are not GTA selling sharkcards for billions of dollars in profit. THAT is a model that works. That is not a model that SFV has.
If SF were more successful and more relevant, they could release a sequel every couple years instead of occasional incremental upgrades that require minimal effort, time and investment for commensurate minimal return. They are stuck in an arcade mindset that they apparently never outgrew in regards to Street Fighter and it hurts them because things like “Ultra Super Duper Uber Street Fighter 5.7” become a meme that push people away from buying the game because they think Capcom is just going to release multiple iterations later for the same price or cheaper (and sometimes they’re right).
Why does Madden or Fifa keep releasing sequels? THEY CAN.
Why does Call of Duty? THEY CAN.
Why does Mortal Kombat? THEY CAN.
SF can’t. Simple as that. They have a sub-par business model because their product has sub-par sales and they have sub-par sales in part because they have a sub-par business model. It feeds back into itself in regards to Street Fighter. This hurts them because they do not develop hype in the market. Mk X? That makes things hype after a huge MK9. MK11 makes things hype after MKX.
Does Arcade Edition make things hype after SFV? No. Most people don’t even know it exists and it sold nothing. Would an SF6? It’d be more hype than SFV AE…but would the development cost outweigh the risk because of the bungled release of SF5? No, probably not…and that’s because of Capcom’s own decision making in regards to SF5 (and some previous titles).
SF was back on top with 4.
They squandered that.
Capcom didn’t think an SF4 would be successful.
They thought gems would be a huge, profitable success.
Capcom thought SF5 would sell multiple millions of copies within its first year.
Capcom itself is delusional in regards to their fighting game division.
You are making my argument for me.
“Hey man, what’d you think of MKX?”
“Oh so cool man! They had like Predator vs Sub-Zero and shit! I played the hell out of it! MK11 is gonna be sick!”
“Hey man, what’d you think of Street Fighter V?”
“…huh? I dunno, it looked kind of ugly and didn’t it not even have a single player mode or something?”
The literal discussions you have with regular video game players about the the two games.
“sponsors and esports money”
People that play SF on stream for lulz make more money on SF regularly than Capcom does. Oh wait, the most relevant fighting game streamer, Maximilian, doesn’t even play SF5 anymore because it’s boring and didn’t get him viewership. Onto bigger, better and MORE RELEVANT things.
[quote=“Phantom_Miria, post:4668, topic:576649”]
How can a series with no viewership at all be considered premiere at anything?[/quote]
Cultural relevance.
Name recognition.
Brand recognition.
Short term profitability.
Long term marketability.
Merchandising profitability.
You know, those things that contribute to anyone knowing about your product and your ability to make future iterations of that product. There’s a reason why we’re on MK11 and we’re only on SF5. MK has remained relevant longer with stronger sales and profitability. The same reason Tekken is at 7 by now.
Twitch views by small numbers of gamers are NOTHING in the marketplace. They’re a drop in the bucket. Good to have, but anyone would prefer MK’s sales numbers.
“Hey do you want to sell two and a half million more copies of your game…or have it stay watchable on Twitch longer?”
Only an idiot developer says the latter.
That’s your metrics.
Irrelevant to the actual market or to those factors I listed above. SF could be premiere but they’ve dropped the ball multiple times and left it to brands like MK and Tekken to carry it…and they have. They picked up SF’s slack and ingrained themselves into the market and the culture.
Again…
What is more likely tomorrow? The announcement of a new MK feature film? Or an SF feature film?
Even if BOTH were announced…which would get more hype?
If you say Street Fighter, you are totally lying to yourself, man.
MK gets that normie money because MK is more relevant which means MK is more premiere.
I don’t think we’re going to agree on this, we just have different ideas of what fighting games are about.
Fighting games are not just any other genre and a fighting game shouldn’t just churn out sequels because it can. Fighting games have the legacy of being the first to introduce the idea of competitive gaming, they should use this legacy and the competitive scene that already exists around series like Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur, etc. to create a modern profitable esports like it happened in other genres. They totally should try to create a viewership base with sponsorships and an economy behind it because this is how their old identities will go on in the modern age, and Capcom, Namco and ArcSys are all seemingly trying to go in this direction.
Mortal Kombat is a different beast, being born as a series that lived off shock factor and gore and then off a strong narrative and single player modes in the last years. The financial support of Warner Brothers also helps a lot giving the series a guaranteed AAA budget. NRS is in the position of not caring about their competitive scene being weak because they’re making bank anyway and because the very identity of Mortal Kombat has never been about competitive gaming anyway.
Other fighting games just shouldn’t follow Mortal Kombat’s example. They should not compromise their competitive identities to try and take on Mortal Kombat on its own territory. They should not embrace a model that’s horrible for fighting games with series and scenes being dropped off after less than two years because, even though NRS makes very good video games that do very well and sell a lot, they also make very bad fighting games that severely underperform in spite of their massive commercial success.
Guilty Gear Xrd is a game that was released in December 2014. The game, after numerous updates, it’s still being played and watched in good numbers in tournaments through all of 2018, its community still plays the game in spite of its age and its developers are supporting it by making it part of their pro tour that will go on into 2019.
Mortal Kombat X lived from 2015 to 2016, it received a bunch of DLCs and then got dropped off the earth once Injustice 2 was released.
I know what kind of scenario I’d prefer for a Street Fighter game, and it’s definitely not the second.
And you’re still looking at GAMES when I’m discussing BRANDS.
Mortal Kombat is a more premiere name in fighting games than Street Fighter. It commands more positive notoriety, profitability, brand health and more.
Quality costs money. Capcom either has no idea of what quality is or decided to take short cuts with thier money (maybe even both).
I agree with the idea that if they treated the franchise (amd its fans) with as much respect as it deserves like MH we would see a better product.
I hate the MK gameplay but I would no doubt buy the game anyway due to how polished the rest of the game is overall. Its a fun game to play even if not taken super seriously by all. Theyre obviously catering for a different type of fighting game player or fan but at least they know thier user base lol.
I agree with all the criticism for Capcom and the poor package of SFV vanilla but I believe both MK and SF has significance and advantage to each other, Yes MK has better story telling in it’s storymode and has better content, Yet SF is still along the line and up there with Tekken. It didn’t went down like other titles.
And I would still argue that Mortal Kombat is not the front runner because Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat just focus on very different things: Street Fighter is the front runner of the competitive world of fighting games while Mortal Kombat is the front runner in terms of story, production value and casual appeal.
Just reducing fighting games to mass appeal, brand, how much they sell and how big their budget is while ignoring the actually played part just sounds wrong to me.
Last point I’m going to make about the whole Raging Demon Souls Shungokusatsu mess. I think Vasili may have had a point about the SGS effecting souls if he would had adhered to the non-canon sources. Due to Oro stating in the Ryu Final that the SGS would claim the soul of whoever it killed making the technique stronger by forcing the claimed soul to fight the SnH forever not knowing it has died. This is the same manga inspiration that the canon now pulls the move depiction from, so why not the metaphysical depiction as well?
I wanted to pose this question because now the line of Nakahira manga canon influence and true influence is now blurred, where as during times when Vasili controlled this argument he would jump in-between canon and non-canon to dictate what was and wasn’t.
Since we now know there is some sort of metaphysical realm with Kage being introduced: could Nakahira’s Oro description of SGS be this missing link to the whole metaphysical description of the SGS?
If this is so, does this mean that SGS could effect the soul given the attack in canon in now being more inspired by this manga? HnK does have an influence on SF no doubt, but I do feel like a lot that has influenced the general art and style direction of the original SF1 & SF2 characters. Things have changed, and SF takes story inspiration from others but then deviates into its own story of fighters and techniques.
Since SF5 story, the series has evolved to draw upon more inspiration from its own licensed manga, especially the Nakahira manga, so who’s to say that now the SGS isn’t more like the Nakahira description where it’s a combination of both a physical/metaphysical attack!
I noticed when @midargsorm went off into the tangent about 六道鏖殺rikudō ōsatsu “Massacre of the Six Realms”., the V-Trigger Kage uses to unlock SGS, and also the phrase he says before he unleashes SGS. He mentions some of the same things Vasili mentioned about SGS, to be more specific, about 奈落naraku and the 18 different hells hot and cold. I got that sort nostalgic plot guide feel. Not to say that the attack itself isn’t totally physical, but could there be some sort of metaphysical component like in the Nakahira Ryu Final, or is it just a metaphorical speaking?
The most interesting part of my research today is that I may have found the missing link of SGS we all missed back in the 90’s which specifically told us what SGS the Raging Demon truly was all about.
Yup SFTMTG! It was the first SGS outside of the SFZ version to be featured as a useable technique. Though it looks totally different in look and command function than what we’re use to seeing from it. It’s interesting that the Japanese Wiki site Kakuge describes this sort of depiction of attack as a 乱舞 Ranbu, or “Wild Dance”. The attack term is best known in SNKs Art of Fighting series in the form of the Kyokugen technique 龍虎乱舞 Ryuko Ranbu “Dragon Tiger Wild Dance”.
The technique bears a striking similarity to the SGS used in the SFTM game and also the 連舞 Renbu “Endless Dance” techniques of the SFEX characters Hokuto and Kairi.
This technique changes into a very SGS like move in the form of Kairi’s SFEX2 version of 凶邪連舞 Kyoja Renbu “Wicked Scourge Endless Dance”.
That technique was the basis for the depiction of the chest impalement of the SGS in the Nakahira manga.
So Capcom was telling the western audience what SGS was essentially the whole time with the start of SFTM!
Capcom is delusional in general, not just in regards to their fighting game division. It isn’t just Capcom, either. Many publishers and dev studios, even major ones, are seemingly disconnected from reality when it comes to predicting what will sell, and how much it will sell.
Remember Chaos Legion? Of course not, no one remembers Chaos Legion. Back in 2003, Capcom thought a brand new IP would sell one million copies. No one could understand Capcom’s logic. This was such a common occurrence at the time that Capcom had to hired an outside consultant to keep the company from eventually falling into bankruptcy. That same disconnected from reality logic still exists today.
When Square Enix said Tomb Raider 2013 sold 3.4mil copies in its first month, it was clearly a successful game. It made news when Square Enix revealed that they’d expected the game to sell 5-6mil copies during that period, because no one could understand why. But something to remember there is that Square thought it was being conservative, Square had calculated the sales would be much higher, and had reduced them to 5-6mil just to play it safe.
You can come up with such stories for various publishers. Franchises and even dev studios themselves have been killed from guys in a board room making decisions without having any apparent clues about reality.
That’s not actually true. Major games can survive in such methods. Other companies successfully support such products.
The issue is that major publishers don’t just want to make money, they want profits to increase every year, because that is what drives stock prices.
Blizzard has long been a successful studio. It releases games sparingly, but any one game they release can pretty much alone fund the company for years. Blizzard was, and could indefinitely remain, highly successful and profitable with its approach. But that isn’t what Activision Blizzard wants. Activision Blizzard wants to be able to report every single year that profits have increased, because simply maintaining the same profits is viewed as being stagnate and causes your stock value to drop. Blizzard seeing years between major releases makes this even worse, as you get a year of phenomenal profits followed by one or more years of respectable but still lower profits. That is a loss for a stockholder, as stock value will drop.
And that is the reason that Activision Blizzard has ordered Blizzard to start slashing expenses, and to push out a much larger number of games at a much higher rate. Of course this means that Blizzard will have trouble justifying spending so much time and money polishing its games, which will eventually result in lower quality releases, which will negatively affect Blizzard’s reputation, which will in turn hurt sales, … Things could actually be even worse if Blizzard does hit another massively successful release, as they will be expected to exceed those inflated figures the next year. (Blizzard has already experienced this with Acitivision pressuring them due to Overwatch’s success.)
In the long run, the “stupid business model” is the one you are promoting, the one that is slowly driving the big publisher games industry to its death. Which is a model that Capcom in general embraces, except it still has people in power who actually still care about making games.
Absolutely agree. Modern games can get so much outta pr. Capcom’s shown some willingness to dip their toes into things with the Twitter Cody letter, Falke reports and G quests, Heck even the gorgeous Captain Commando beat em up bundle commercial shows the creative spark is there, they just need to mine it and utilize it more. I’d love if there was some more budget out into creative pr and viral marketing for future SF releases to get hype and fun flowing. I mean really, look at my videos, I do that for free, can you imagine someone with budget, resources, and direct insight from Capcom pushing forward with all that?
Heh, it’d be nice and help keep excitement aloft between news dry spells.
Whoa, whaaaaaaaaaaaaat? This is interesting. I’ve never read Ryu Final (heresy, I know), so this is new to me. Interesting question though dude.
As for my personal feels, I hope that the SGS doesn’t get like Oro’s quote there. I don’t mind it having some sort of metaphysical nature, I mean I recall one of you guys mentioning that the mere presence of the SNH in some depictions crumples and kills plant life, so having the oncoming initiation of the SGS maybe drive the victim into some spiritual turmoil and or bolstering the user, pushing them closer to that fabled madness that’s been discussed would make sense. I just think that it having some spiritual component like making someone’s spirit being unable to ever rest is kinda a bit much.
If it was the switched that the user of the SGS absorbs the resentment (at being killed), hatred, pain, fear and madness of their victim from the moment it strikes and as an effect, always swirling around in the user’s head effectively haunting them and also having a calling to kill more to make for some twisted catharsis and hall of victory in your head could be weird but nifty. I don’t know if my word salad makes sense, but basically a growing cockiness and madness happens with each kill scored. Though I’d personally be fine with it being just an instant murder.
Whoa, interesting that SFTMG was closer to what it’s supposed to be lol. I used to have that game but never bothered with Akuma before I returned it.
In Alpha Generations, I believe the SNH claimed the souls of those that fell to it as we saw in the end all the warriors that died to it waiting to be freed.
Garuda is also essentially the physical embodiment of all those who fell to the SNH (Kinda like Ermac but with a twist).
