I don’t really think he’s a ‘veteran’. He had his join date changed by Wizard to be one of the cool kids. SRK is all about showing that you’re hardcore with witty one-liners and ‘teh H8’.
I don’t feel 3s was a failure in the grand scheme of things. I do feel it alienated a lot of players with the parry system. Plus I think it was a bold decision by Capcom to have a early whole new cast. They did have some great ideas though and it seems like the game has lasting appeal within the community.
The only thing that really sucked about 3S was the parry system, aside from that 3S, SF2T, and A3 are the top SF games.
I think you mean Alpha 2 Gold/Zero 2 Alpha.
Yeah, but your definition of failure doesn’t matter. It’s Capcom’s that matters, and to them SF3 was a failure.
The game tanked when it was released. It didn’t do nearly as well as Capcom wanted/hoped. Capcom didn’t sit back and think “Man, well, maybe the game will start getting popular 5 or 7 years from now, we’ll enjoy the profits then!” No, it was “Man, this game tanked. Perhaps the market for 2D 1 on 1 fighters is dying out, and no longer profitable.”
Remember, Ono had to more or less beg for the green light for SFIV. If SF3 had been considered successful, they would have not given second thought to making a sequel.
Didn’t like SF3’s parry system. A3 is by far the most fun to play of any street fighter.
The parry system? Seriously? Of all things, of all the god damn things that make the game fundamentally flawed, people hate the parry system?
Except SF3 had so many things going agaisnt it, honestly it had everything to do with presentation and how Capcom went about its release…they just got plain lazy and sloppy.
My bads, I thought you said SF3 from SF2.
If my definition doesn’t matter, neither does yours. The fact is (unless you work for Capcom…maybe you do) you don’t know whether SF3 was considered a failure by Capcom any more than I do.
Again, you don’t know what Capcom expected. I never heard Capcom predict a massive SF2-like renaissance. It’s not as if SF3 was hyped up nearly as much as SF4 has been. Their expectations could have been much more modest considering the state of 2D fighting games at the time and the countless other releases coming out almost simultaneously.
The release of Third Strike is evidence that the first 2 games didn’t completely tank…in the eyes of Capcom, at least.
Right. That’s why they went on to release Alpha 3, Pocket Fighter, Jojo, 3 Marvel games, CvS1 and CvS2 after SF3:NG “tanked”.
Obviously, Capcom gave up on 2D fighters by releasing more 2D fighters.
What about all the other SF related games that came out after SF3? Why doesn’t the success or failure of any of those games ever enter the equation? People act like SF3 was the last SF related game ever, when it wasn’t.
The only mistake is how they actually treated the completed game as a product that needs to be put out there.
I know because its been stated many times. In the many pre-launch interviews Ono gave, he danced around the “SF3 didn’t work” concept many times without flat-out saying it (the good 'ol Japanese way) and the primary reason why there are NO SF3 characters in SFIV is because Capcom thinks they don’t sell. If that’s not considered a failure, I dunno what is.
I don’t think anyone expected it to be the second coming, but it fell way short of expectations. And it WAS hyped. It took a good 5-6 years from the launch of SFII to even get to SF3. The Mortal Kombat series, which started well after SFII, hit MK3 before Street Fighter did. The running joke was “Capcom can’t count to 3” back then. So SF3 very much was a big deal.
The original NG cabinets didn’t even have “Street Fighter” written on it. It was just “III”. As in, you knew what that III meant.
Or, they were trying to draw in more people with more features/characters.
I didn’t say that SF3 tanking was the definitive death of 2D fighters. Nor was the decline of 2D fighting SF3’s fault. A lot of it has to do with other factors as well, but SF3 performing poorly didn’t really help either.
Also note that I said “1 vs 1 fighting”. A3’s release was fairly close to SF3’s. And the Vs. series isn’t 1 on 1 fighting. Even CvS2 was released in 02 - so its been a long time since Capcom has really put a serious effort into the fighting game genre. We got CFJ…but yeah, that didn’t exactly work well.
If you’re talking about the Marvel vs series or CvS, that’s sort of a different beast. They aren’t Street Fighter games, so their successes or failure aren’t really counted towards Street Fighter.
Capcom wasn’t even going to make a new numbered Street Fighter game until Ono pushed for it. I don’t know if Capcom directly said “SF3 bombed so we don’t want to make SFIV”, but its logical to think that SF3 not quite doing as well as they might have liked may have contributed to the reluctance to do a SFIV.
I think the whole “There were no SF3 characters in SFIV so it must have been a failure” branch of reasoning is sort of accurate. With SFIV’s release, they wanted to draw in the casuals (even ULTRA CASUALS) once again by including every one of the original 12 II’HF characters. Play SFII when you were 10 and remember liking a green dude with orange hair who could electrify himself? He’s there. What about that big wrestler guy with the hairy shins? Yup, he’s there. And that Indian fella with the stretchy limbs and fire-breathing? Fuck yeah he’s there.
My point being, SFIII is literally so unheard of in the States that to include SFIII characters would cause 90% of interested parties to cock their heads and say “What? Another new character? Why isn’t this ‘Alex’ being hyped like Rufus or El Fuerte?” More trouble than it was worth to Capcom, I assume. That’s not to say they won’t include any SFIII chars in future iterations of the game (should there be any) or even downloadable characters. Hell, if Alex, Yun or even fuckin’ Hugo had won that “Popularity Poll” instead of Cammy we’d be seeing one in the home version already.
And, of course, SFIII is nowhere near forgotten by Capcom. At least Alex is in TvC. =/
want proof that SF3 was a failure?? Many people had no idea there was an SF3 before the daigo video.
Actually, the definition of failure is not setting out to do what your goal was. Capcom wanted Street Fighter 3 to make a profit within a reasonable amount of time considering cost. They are a corporation that makes a product, in this case, an expensive toy. Did it make any profit within a year? It didn’t. so it failed. You cannot argue this. Just think about it logically.
Secondly, how in the name of fuck was alpha 3 a throwback with 3 diffrent fighting styles, Vs series esque juggling, V-Ism bullshit, and air recovery and such?
Also, the series wasn’t alive since 2001 when CvS2 came out until last year when SF4 was released. And don’t tell me about tourney’s. For a series to be alive it needs to be in production. The tournament scene might be alive, but not the game.
I personally am not a huge fan of Street Fighter 3’s mechanics because well, it doesn’t feel like a Street Fighter game. But I still play it and enjoy it. So don’t think I’m trying to cast SF3 down, I’m just pointing out certain facts. It failed, so, it was a mistake on Capcom’s part.
I agree that they aren’t Street Fighter games, but their success did play towards making a new Street Fighter. Rehashing old sprites from years old games and slapping them into a VS game saves you a lot more money. Capcom also saturated the market with different 2D fighters during the release of SF3 while SF2.
Also, this ‘most people don’t know about SF3’ is really a moot point. Most people would only know World Warrior (not ST) and some form of Mahvel.
I think that’s only one way to define success or failure and I don’t think it’s the right way, at least not for a game. Starcraft isn’t still in production yet that remains one of the most played games in the world. People still play 3rd Strike, they still talk about it quite a bit on here and on other forums, it still gets played at tourneys, so I’d say, by and large, it’s still alive. If the game had been discarded like Soul Calibur 3 was, then I’d be inclined to say it was a failure.
I bet that if 3rd Strike was offered on XBLA or PSN, it’d sell a lot of copies.
Anyway, what people are saying about Capcom’s lack of promo for it is dead on the money. I was involved with the arcade scene back around WW’s release and while my interest waned a bit once ST came out, I still kept up with the game mags and such. I never remember hearing much more than a peep about SF3. I actually remember seeing a machine in an arcade I went to in Canada. If Capcom had plastered Alex’s or Dudley’s faces all over the place, I bet SF3’s cast would be more popular than it is now, but as it is, you can’t expect people to care about characters that the company who created them didn’t see fit to promote well.
The desire to fill SF4 with SF2 characters doesn’t prove that SF3 was a failure. It just proves that SF2 was more popular. No one here is arguing that.
In those same interviews, Ono is also very proud of SF3 bragging about how it’s still played in arcades today, how it was the pinnacle of Capcom sprite based fighting, and how it catered to more hardcore audiences.
Also, just because they didn’t make it in SF4, doesn’t mean SF3 characters didn’t make it to other games.
TvC, CvS2, Pocket Fighter, Sean reference in MvC, Shin Shoryuken and Shippu Jinrai randomly showing up in other games…and Chun-Li’s never been the same since.
Dang, why are there always only two options here? Either complete success or total failure? It’s always the extremes with people on SRK…
What about: “SF3 did okay”? Did anyone ever think of that?
But, the average gamer doesn’t even know SF3 existed. If it truly were hyped as much as you think, then people would at least remember it, good or bad.
Think of all the over-hyped disappointments the gaming industry has seen over the years. People still remember them, even if they sucked. At the time, lots of people just weren’t aware that this game came out. (And. lack of console release is probably the main reason)
Of course, that would require you to actual FIND a cabinet in your area…
I find it hard to believe that a series like CvS, which contains EVERY SINGLE WORLD WARRIOR, plus Cammy and Akuma isn’t relevant to the Street Fighter series.
Same with VS series, which originally started out as X-men vs STREET FIGHTER.
Also, don’t forget SFEX 2 and 3. Games with Street fighter clearly in the title. Also, post SF3:NG.
Again, the decision to favor SF2 characters only proves that SF2 was more popular than SF3.
It doesn’t prove that SF3 was a failure.
Explain Third Strike please. Failures don’t get sequels. And, failed sequels of failures REALLY don’t get sequels.
Capcom likes money. If a series is bombing SO horribly, there’s no way they would make a second revision, let alone a third revision. I could understand Second Impact, since supposedly it’s what New Generation should have been and a lot of the work was already in progress…but Third Strike was a LOT of additional work. All new stages, new music, 5 new characters rendered in that grueling animation style, new animations for old characters…
There’s no way Capcom would spend the time and money on a sinking failure like that…unless THEY didn’t think it was sinking as badly as you do.
We can sit here and talk about what we THINK their expectations were for the game…but, Capcom’s actions speak louder than we.
Have you seen the roster of Alpha 3? And, what’s X-ism all about?
I’m not saying that SF3 is a failure of a game that’s not worth your quarters. I personally am not a fan, but I think its great that the game is still alive and has a strong community. SF3’s comeback is definitely a good thing for the fighting game scene.
However, from a business/corporate standpoint, the game crashed. The suits at Capcom don’t care how much we love or hate the game, they care how much money we dumped into it. And when they were looking at the numbers, we weren’t buying it.
Its like, here on SRK we call the 3D Mortal Kombat games total trash, and from a gameplay standpoint they are pretty bad. But outside of the fighting game hardcore community, MK is still a successful franchise. It doesn’t matter if no one is playing MKA now because the game sold extremely well and made a profit.
You’re not looking at what types of games those are though. Anything VS series is cross-promotional. Yeah, it may have Street Fighters in it, but the big draw is “Capcom teams up with _______ Company to bring you this dream match-up!” Not to mention that VS games are team battles, while Street Fighter is 1 vs 1.
I’m not saying this was the case, but lets just say here that SF3 bombed completely while CvS2 was a great success. How do you think Capcom would look at this?
“Well, SF3 failed, but the success of CvS2 shows that people still have an interest in the Street Fighters, so we should make another SF game soon.”
Or…
“We can see from SF3’s failure that interest in 1 on 1 Street Fighter has died down. CvS2 succeeded because of the different format and the appeal of fighting against SNK characters for the first time. It would not be worthwhile to go back to a traditional Street Fighter game format.”
Also, SFEX is…well…3D…and not even made by Capcom.
well…um…nice to know there’s an actual serious conversation going I guess
I disliked the parry system. I never used it to defend myself cuz I could never time it right. I’m glad SF4 doesn’t have that. The Focus Attack is such a better option and it’s easy to pull off. Ono did right there.
SF3 had some really bizarre characters. The exceptions were a few like Dudley and Ibuki for example.