its more than possible to make a better version of st, hdr is not that game. i dont really see anyone making “st is perfect” an arguement and yeah we know that hdr is accessible. the only thing left to figure out is what do the majority of players want to compete in at events. st being a classic game has nothing to do with it. its “what do people want to play?”
well we’ve heard that capcom didnt want a remix mode, perhaps they knew something about its consumers? we also know that hdr wasnt released in japan, the one time i have seen this brought up in an interview the answer a certain member of capcom gave was “they are very protective of the sf license there”. when capcom japan outsources its licenses we get some of the worst releases of all time, look up final fight streetwise and what is probably the only technically unplayable street fighter game ever released, ccc2.
hdr needed to come out either a year earlier, when people were starved for a new street fighter game(this would have been a huge thing for sf2 and it would have prob been the main game at evo 2k8) or a year later so it could be refined. the changes got it pushed back and then it basically became a marketing appetizer for sf4 so we got it when we did.
ggpo is the modernization of st, so is streaming live from a cabinet with people around the world watching an event live and being able to easily pull up hundreds of matches on youtube from your phone. the people that loved and put work into st kept it alive all these years. capcom realized they could make $ by selling these guys yet another version, which is why hdr got green lit. these same people will keep it going. there are new players getting involved, there is an educated community, the future is whatever we want it to be