The arcade market was small in 2008 with SF4. It’s actually grown in the States. My friend owns and arcade and would have bought at least 2 units. Japan is probably flat.
Would they make enough money to profit? No. Enough to cover development costs? Probably not, but it’s money left on the table regardless, and it serves a dual purpose as it would have provided a public platform for play and testing.
I would have done that, an arcade release of this beta, then gave people who fully pre-order the game between last month and June, the release of the final finished product, free access to download the “arcade version” or “late beta” whatever you want to call the game released in stores right now as Street Fighter V. You made money, you pleased customers, you provide hardcore gamers early access and you build hype for the release of the polished, final full game in June.
I also would have done DLC similar to how MKX does it, and perhaps built upon that with some good ideas. Profit+Success+Hype+Happy gamers. The way Combofiend and Ono did this is a complete and utter disaster and sales next month will reflect that as will lifetime unit sales of the product and low DLC sales as well, since hardcore players will unlock everything for free, and casuals aren’t coming near this trainwreck.
The future of SF is now in jeopardy thanks to non-business oriented Americans being brought in making horrible decisions at Capcom and Sony. They tried to make a game catered to the hardcore market and even failed miserably in that respect.
But hey what do I know. I just have a Bachelor’s in Marketing, Business Management and a lifelong interest in Street Fighter and have followed this industry closely for my entire adult life, predicting things like the success of the Wii, the Kinect, and failure of Wii U and disasters that almost buried Capcom time and time again, even in the face of my opinions being unpopular at times I’ve been proven right again and again. But nah I dont’ know anything CF and Ono they are on top of this /sarcasm.
I question if arcade machines have grown as a product, though. The resurgence of arcades seems mostly to be coming from outlets that charge for entry and time spent rather than coin ops. That makes the viability of a multi thousand dollar cabinet release questionable in my eyes. Sure, arcades are around, but how many are actually stocked with new arcade machines rather than classics and a bunch of consoles?
You can get the same telemetry from an invite only beta and you’d probably reach a much larger and more varied audience. Not to say what your’e saying is wrong, it might have built a bit of hype and would have served for some purposes. I just think its money they could have just spent on straight up development costs. From a balance or bug perspective the actual product seems pretty solid. It’s the structure surrounding the gameplay loop that needs a mountain of work.
Why not just give early access to people who pre order? Or go in on some sort of crowdfunding campaign with continuous beta access as a tier for funding? If they really needed capitol to finish the product I think there are less arcane methods than a cabinet release.
I genuinely don’t understand how they could have ever thought a cosmetic freemium strategy could be layered on top of a 60 dollar disk. It’s like they totally misunderstood what makes games like LoL or CS:GO successful. I think their only path to salvation is just to run through the first year of development work they have in production and then make the game f2p. If they want to be the generations fighting game that’s the only way foreward.
Are… Are you mad at me? :s
I’ve worked in game design, I actually agree with a lot of what you’re saying.
Really I was expecting more interactive stages or more interactive supers to stages. Like aka birdie putting you into ground and legs sticking up. They could have done so much more I think with everybody for better ko’s.
Is that supposed to be a secret spin-off of “Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn,” where they just completely change the genre into something completely different, but the players that like to mash will feel right at home? That won’t go well… but hey, at least there is arcade mode!
I was expecting these big ones regarding aesthetics:
[list=1]
[] Character specific intros like those of Alpha 3 or CvS2.
[] Unique crumble KO animations for each character instead of the generic falling to their knees and lay down animation, like 3S.
[] Whenever a character got electrocuted, each one of those have a specific stance or animation where they writhe in pain as the skeleton alternates, again like 3S.
[] A super or two that put opponents into specific animation or stances, like Demitri’s Midnight Bliss or a lot of Instant Kills in GGXrd.
[/list]
Of course, that ship has already sailed and, with the probable exception of a second CA, we are probably never going to see a single in-game extra animation asset given to the already existing characters.
Not much more than what I got. What I didn’t expect was the costume colors. Fuck that shit, I paid full price. Freemium grind for new content, delivering part of the game as DLC due to tight schedules I can understand. Locking content in a paid product behind an atrocious grind wall I can’t.
So I got the game for $30 the other. I can feel the pain of the people that bought it for $60. Specially those that bought the game plus the season pass, $90. First, its extremely annoying that every notice that I get from the game, says “This or that is now available on the shop”. I EARN the ability to buy stuff. I think that is hideous. Second, the fact that I have in my character selection screen Alex, Guile, Balrog, Ibuki and Juri with a shopping cart. I see that each of them cost 100,000 FM an I only have 32,000. So it means I have to grind as hell just to get ONE character. I honestly do not know if its worth the hassle. Second, you have stages with shopping carts on them. There are not a lot of stages to begin with! I compare this game to Street Fighter 4 where I purchased EVERY SINGLE VERSION. I only felt rip off then, with the AE version not with the other 3 versions. If I pay for a game, I want THE game, I do not want shopping carts or notices all around the game.
Funny fact, I was doing some calculations, and this is what I spent on the entire SF IV saga, buying everything on sale. SF IV, SSFIV, SFIV AE and USFIV, $134. I spent this much willingly. I was calculating that on SFV, taking into account that the game will last 5 years at $30 FULL PRICE per season pass. We will spend $150, WITHOUT GOOD WILL. Assuming everyone I will pay full price, which I wont because I will buy everything on SALE like I did before. Assuming I use the price of GMG site for season pass, $26 right now, I would be spending $130 total in 5 years. Plus the $30 for the base game, $160 total. Was it worth it to create so much hate Capcom?
Arcade/story
Vs cpu/player
Trials
Tutorial
Online that worked
A polished product
I got…
Practice
Prologue
Online that didn’t work, terrible search times. I couldn’t even battle lounge a friend for around a month.
A free stage (season pass)
Shit menus and awful textures. Lag in practice? Fuck. Just a shoddy product.
Paying for colours. Fucking colours.
Matchmaking has improved. Its not great but at least I’m getting more than 6 fights an hour.
Loading times are still terrible.
Or I can play survival for low health supliments in the last e fights.