So I waltzed into a Gamestop yesterday and I was browsing the 360 used games section. When I found Street Fighter IV, I was a little shocked to find out there were more used copies of that game than anything else in the store. Why is this? I know SFIV sold a ton, especially to casual gamers that haven’t played a SF game in years. Did they just tire of the game quickly and return it?
LOL…every fighting game always gets put in the used bin once HaloMaster3423 is done with it. They have no use for the game once they realize the only replay value the game has is online play or driving for hours to a tournament where they will get beasted on unless they put down Halo or GTAIV for a couple weeks. Even other big name games like DevilMayCry rack up the used bin once people are done. Especially with the way the economy is people are trying to get store credit towards other games when they are done playing. It’s not that people don’t like SFIV…it’s that it’s done for them what its needed and the only replay value now is for the hardcores. You can’t be the crap guy on a good team like in Halo or Gears of War.
If you suck at SFIV…you just keep losing and losing. There’s no winning team that you can piggy back on and humans in nature don’t like to lose. So once they realize they have nothing to do but lose unless they stop playing their go to games while pigging out on chicken and nachos…they just get some of their money back and wait for Madden 10 or Bayonetta or whatever the hell else is coming out that I don’t care about.
Yeah I suppose that’s right. Most fighting games take a fair amount of discipline and practice to be the most enjoyable.
I am surprised that this surprises you
Fighting games are hard.
We can whine about how easy and safe Ryu’s DP > FACD > Ultra is…but keep in mind a large portion of the video game community CAN’T THROW A FIREBALL. Seriously.
Fighting games are really only “keepers” for gamers with a certain type of personality. Casual weekend gamers don’t always have the desire to spend hours in training mode practicing…if you think about it, that sounds a lot like work, doesn’t it?
I’m just pleased that 6 months after release, I can still find matches easily using arcade request mode. So, people are indeed playing. Just not everybody.
Well played sir, well played.
tru stuff, I’ve had friends who bought the game and were asking me tips on how to consistently do a shoryuken… the flaming shoryuken of course.
They probably couldn’t get there hands on a stick or could not afford one. I think if you spent money on a stick, and even if you hate sf4 / fighters you would keep it so that accessory you bought could still be put to use.
I definitely think the casuals are starting to lose interest, BUT, I think there are more people who have put in some decent time to get better as well. I played Ranking mode for the first time in a long while, and I played some good people who totally beat me down. Now I’m not that advanced to say the least, and my technique needs some work in some areas, but I’m not a pushover either. It is nice to have good people to play. Hopefully this keeps up.
Blocking is cheap.
It’s because SFIV sucks balls.
Yup this is exactly it. 09ers jumping ship, i called it.:lol:
I saw tons of traded in SF4 copies at my local GS as well.
DevilJin pretty much said it.
I think there’s an environment that randomly has to appear in order to have the correct conditions to get into fighters.
I didn’t get into fighters until about 5 years ago. A couple buddies bought anniversary edition for SF2, then discovered that they liked 3rd strike even more. Eventually every few days we would play 3rd strike for a few hours, every time I’d get my arse kicked but we’d all learn how to do moves and parry and the like… we were all at a pretty even level.
When everyone is low level like that, no one ever gets beasted, no one ever really dominates, and virtually everything that seasoned players think as commonplace becomes crazy and awesome. I remember the first time my buddy threw out a random akuma super while my other friend was jumping back and he managed to air parry the whole thing. Or when I did my first jump in > fierce shoryu > shoryu reppa. Looking at it now doesn’t say much, but getting all those “little rewards” is what makes people stick with fighters.
I think that’s the condition that needs to be filled to get into fighters. A scene. Even a small one. Noobs getting raped online get turned off FAST.
We are in the niche market ladies and gents. We are an “elite few” who enjoy a game with actual depth to it. We enjoy a game that doesn’t reward you for just mashing buttons the whole game. Deviljin is right about the Halo thing, but I’d even go a bit further. I’d say a majority of those people who dropped off the game thought their “mad skills” at something like Dead or Alive would translate over to SF4.
Let’s face it, Street Fighter is NOT a button mash game. I’ve known people who couldn’t learn to toss a simple fireball after a whole week of practicing. Some would get it on one side, but then they think “crap! they jumped on the other side!” SF games for the most part are not a “pick up and go” setup. If you’re used to button mashing, you can have a great time with your friends in DoA and even Tekken/Soul Calibur series, but that won’t do crap for you when it comes to getting pegged by a shoryuken.
SF is also not a “party” game. It takes two to tango, and that’s rough if you have a group of Madden/Halo peoples with 4 controllers.
If you don’t have a dedicated group of friends to play with, the only other way you’re ever going to get into fighters is by being close to an arcade. The thing I liked about fighting games is there’s almost no luck involved. It’s skill vs skill usually and I’m all about playing to win. Being next to an arcade, there was always people better than me at fighting games and wanting to win, plus finding certain games like CvS2 enjoyable meant SF4 was an easy thing to pick up.
If I didn’t have an arcade with SF4 around with other fighting game enthusiasts in my same area, there’s no way I’d have purchased SF4, let alone keep it. Online play has no enjoyment factor to me.
Everyone I know sold their copy. I think a lot of people bought it because of the reviews and hype; then they realized there’s a very technical game underneath and they don’t want to put in the time to learn the nuances.
That, and the fact that most PC gamers don’t have, and never will, own an arcade stick to play with, or even know what an arcade stick is.
" WTF Those toys are for hackspit console gamers, mouse+keyboard 4 life!" they’ll tell you.
Playing this game on the keyboard is for masochists or oldschool joypad users. Definately not for noobs at least. Once they realize that, it’s back to the bin, and boot up Team Fortress 2 again.
You mean avoid? 
Street Fighter isn’t a game you can even sort-of master within a couple of days, like other console games. Heck, in the Call of Duty games, you can consistently get #1 just by hiding around and camping. If there were more ways to directly punish that type of play, those players would just quit and go to another game rather than learn how to counter a counter.
Here’s a funny little story…
I’m currently in college and found out that there’s a video game club; I join it in hopes of finding more SFIV players. Rather than a club of prestige, high-class gamers, I instead find a classroom of people playing WoW and various shooters.
We held a small tournament of about 12 people last week for Halo 3, and I squeezed into 3rd place even though I’ve only played it a few times when it was first released. I just transferred over my knowledge from PC shooters like Quake 3 and CS:S and was able to out do most of them.
The next day, one guy finally brings out SFIV. Throughout our short session, many said that Blanka was cheap, another said that Bison was cheap, and one other guy said that my Guile was cheap… because I kept getting him with my overhead as he sat there crouch-blocking. The rest were just your average Kens thinking that they’re good because they know how to do an FADC combo and always catch people with their Reversal Shoryu.
So, yeah. As long as it takes more effort than looking directly at someone, fighters will always be a niche genre.
Capcom said in an interview with PC Gamer UK that they didn’t do this PC port expecting to earn millions, it’s more a testing ground to see if there is a PC community out there for fighting games, since we haven’t really had a fighting game on PC for a decade. Time will show if more games get ported, then.
I think time has already shown that the PC fighting game market is just barely there.