Street Fighter 4 Has Officially Been Out For Almost A Day. Capcom Already Talking About DLC Characters And Championship Edition.
About a week ago Capcom was pretty steadfast in the notion of not screwing their customers. There wouldn’t be any DLC characters they said. That would make for an unbalanced game and could give an unfair advantage to the players willing to bend over the furthest to pay for new characters. Now, with Street Fighter having been out for almost a day, Capcom is mentioning the possibility of adding fighters like T. Hawk and Deejay to the lineup through DLC.
What the hell? Now granted, this isn’t unheard of and Capcom has made its money hungry position known by announcing some ridiculously priced costume packs. But to potentially unbalance the game in the name of making money… it just doesn’t seem like a very “Street Fighter” thing to do. For a game that has always been about balance and technique, to throw that away for money just seems like a terrible thing to do.
In an interview with Famitsu, Yoshinoro Ono said:
The development team said, “We want them in!” Honestly, we did the modeling up to the pre-texturing. We made the fight settings for T. Hawk in Street Fighter IV… If user’s make their voices known, this prep work is something we can revive at anytime.
A championship edition of the game is also being talked about. It’s assumed that this would be a new retail release but it would make sense to make it available as DLC. The news of a championship edition is less surprising but the fact that its being talked about the day of Street Fighter 4′s release is ridiculous. It almost seems like Capcom wants to be the bastard version of Criterion. They have a great game out, Street Fighter 4, and they have tons of little things to add to it: costumes, new modes with replay capabilities, a championship edition rebalancing and new characters. The similarities between this and Burnout Paradise are obvious, the difference is Criterion seems to be a company that is in it less for the money and more for building a loyal fanbase by continuously supporting the game. Capcom? They want your money. Hey, times are tough and companies need money however they can get it, reputation be damned.
I can already here the arguments for why this is a good idea. “Hey, if the pre texturing is done then why not put it in the game? It’ll probably only be a few dollars” Would you present the same argument for Oblivion’s horse armor? If Bethesda had said, “Well hell, we already have the horse to throw some stuff on, lets make some armor and maybe a saddlebag after that.” Would that have made it ok? No, it would have still been one of the worst DLC releases ever. I honestly don’t believe that T. Hawk’s model is already completely done except for final rendering and they just decided not to put him in. If it is, then there is a reason he wasn’t put in other than time constraints. They’re gauging interest. I expect to see DLC characters and costumes released for stupid prices and a year down the line we will have Street Fighter 4: Championship Edition being advertised as the version that should have been in the beginning and that promises to rebalance all of the characters that the DLC characters screwed up. As well as including all costumes unlocked from the beginning. Also, I can confirm that at the very least the very first pack of costumes are already on the disc. The collector’s edition came with a code for the first batch of costumes and it took up a hefty 178kb…yeah.
Rebalanced versions of Street Fighter games are nothing new. They have been introducing gameplay tweaks, new characters, and costumes for years. The difference between what’s been done before and what is potentially being done now is that if two people were at an arcade, a friend’s house, or a tournament, they were both playing the same version of the game. They both had all of the same options. Also, these updates came all at once and all in one place at one price. Imagine if back in the day Akuma could only be unlocked if you had the means to pay for him. What if you could only play with the first run of Street Fighter 2 characters while your friend had the option to play as Sagat, Bison, Vega and Balrog? It would’ve completely changed what Street Fighter 2 became.
It’s disappointing to hear about the direction that Capcom may be taking Street Fighter in but it seems like DLC can make almost any company change up their priorities. Welcome to the future I guess.
Dammit Capcop. :(
Perhaps now I will just wait for Street Fighter IV Championship Edition or whatever they end up calling it. If it comes in the form of a DLC add-on or a whole new different disk I will just wait it out,because when it finally does come out I’m sure Street Fighter IV will have gone down in price.
Ummm… Where did you hear they were making a Championship Edition (that title was only used in SF2 remakes, while SF3 used different subtitles).
and second, who said you’d have to pay for Dee Jay or T.Hawk?
Here is a link to the famitsu article.
http://www.famitsu.com/interview/article/1222047_1493.html?ref=rss
Also, while pricing hasn’t been confirmed for the the POSSIBLE future DLC characters, if Capcom is nickle and diming us on costumes that are already on the disc, I have a hard time believing they wouldn’t take the opportunity to get more money.
A championship, super turbo, round 2, whatever the hell edition is always a guaranteed with any street fighter game so its not surprising that one will eventually be released. What is surprising is that they would talk about it so soon. We all know that an updated version will be released eventually but it’s nice to enjoy the version we have now without having to worry about what may or may not need fixing.
I highly doubt Yoshinoro Ono would have us pay for extra characters, and even if he does, who cares, I doubt it’d be much of a problem (just look at Soul Calibur 4) and plus you bought a game console, most likely the point is to spend more money for entertainment not expect a whole lot of free stuff.
And how can you relate characters to costumes, Street Fighter never allowed you to change your costume (just color) so it would make sense that they’d have you pay for this feature (which I highly doubt is on the disc).
and at the same time you can’t really complain for costumes, if you want em just pay for them that’s the business strategy behind this despite how stupid it seems, the only thing I can complain about is that we should’ve gotten the ability to make our own color palettes for the characters clothing alike the latest SNK fighting games.
and for the updated version, now that I think of it, despite balancing the game it will probably be the update to contain Dee Jay and T.Hawk and who ever else they’d want to add (Yun, Yang, Guy, Cody, Hugo, Sean, etc…).
and I don’t see the problem if they want to release one, the thing is we probably won’t see this for a while anyways, and it will almost definitely be DLC (if Capcom is smart) to avoid issues with the $60 price and it will probably have alot of new features and stuff worth paying for.
The reason why Capcom would be talking about it now is to get as many ideas in for it’s release (which probably won’t be seen till next year, to gain potential sales).
I have the first costume pack downloaded and can confirm it is on the disc. The download size was just over 150 KBs.
I guess I should point out, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with releasing an updated version of the game. If none of the Street Fighter games had ever gotten an update then we would of missed out on a lot. I think if they are going to put new characters in like Dee Jay or T. Hawk or whoever then they should be held back until that release to make sure they are balanced with the other characters. Chun-Li wasn’t in the original release of 3rd strike but she was a good addition eventually.
The problem would be if they just rushed the characters out the door. Whether they cost money or are free, my main concern is that they won’t be balanced. Right now people are in the mood to buy anything with the words Street Fighter on it and Capcom could make a lot of money by rushing out unbalanced characters. Hopefully they won’t though. The costume thing wouldn’t be as big of a deal if they didn’t come on the disc. The problem with that is that we already own the disc. We paid for it and should have all the content on that disc available to us either immediately or as an in game unlockable.
I do agree that custom color swaps would be cool. That could be added for free through an update. With games like Soul Cal 4 and Virtua Fighter 5 allowing you to totally change the look of your fighter it would be nice to have some kind of an option for customization. I thought it was pretty funny that Dan’s alternate color makes his costume look just like Goku’s.
Also, Capcom if you’re reading this…my vote for a new character goes to Elena. That’s right I said it.
lol, I’d love to see Elena in the game.
Also I doubt the costumes are on the disc, since they’re just image files and vector maps (this could all be in compressed PNG and .txt files) so it’s possible that they just managed to squeeze everything into 150kb.
I dunno though, I won’t defend them all the way but at the same time (though I hate the argument coming up) it’s their game, and their job is to sell, despite Ono having so much love for the series, etc… he has a job to uphold for Capcom in the end so monetize as much as possible I say, it’s not like I’ll be buying most of the DLC for the game anyways (it’s just nice to know that it’s there).
The one thing I must say I’m dissapointed in is the lack of new characters, only 4 new people doesn’t sound like a big deal to me. Though I understand their reasoning and it’s probably so that the next title doesn’t overflow with characters from SF2, SF3, SF4 and SFA3 (plus what ever new people they make for SF5).
Money makes the world go round. I’m kind of disappointed by the lack of new characters as well but I understand their reasoning behind it. The absolutely massive amount of bitching about Third Strike originally only containing 2 of the original characters has to of scared them off of making a lot of new characters. I believe there are more than 4 new characters though. Abel, C Viper, Rufus, El Fuerte, Seth, and Gouken are all new. It seems like quite a few when you type them out but I would of liked to of seen some of the Third Strike characters. A lot of other characters from Third Strike and Alpha do make appearances in the intro and outro of some characters though. I thought that was a nice touch.
I still miss Sean. But at least I have Dan back instead. I’m just hoping that instead of releasing new iterations of SF 4 they just patch the existing version. With DLC there is no excuse for a “Re-balanced” version of a game when a few files can be downloaded directly into owners consoles.
Yea, I hope all reiterations come in the form of DLC.
I keep forgetting about Seth and Gouken, only because Seth is the boss and Gouken was seen before in the series just never playable.
and I felt the appearance of characters from 3rd strike (Yun and Yang) and the Alpha characters was nice too.
Though it hints heavily at them appearing in the game at some point (via expansion).
In the expansion they’ll probably just give us Dee Jay, T. Hawk, Yun, Yang, 2 new people and 2 characters from Alpha that everyone remembers.
Then like every other Street Fighter game there’s probably going to be a 3rd and final expansion with maybe 2 or 3 characters from SF3 (remember they can’t give us too many SF3 characters to avoid breaking the story) the rest of the favorable characters from Alpha and 4 or 5 new people.
I know previous Street Fighter games haven’t given us that many characters, but in my eyes Capcom is stuck at a point where the only choice is to give us choice, they’ll probably redesign the character select screen so that the people who remember the game for SF2 won’t get confused.
In my opinion, Street Fighter 4 was a big disappointment in the first place. The graphics, believe it or not, aren’t done that much at all, it looks like it takes no effort from one who knows of the actually capabilities of a 3D engine and not some ignorant fool who thinks “Oh, 2D graphics are outdated, 3D graphics are better and harder to make.” When in truth, 2D graphics cost alot more money BECAUSE they’re harder to make. Also, the horrid music, ugh… What IS that? Nothing to remember, some of it just sounds like landscape music. Anyhow, the storylines suck (No surprise) for obvious reasons. The gameplay has been changed so that you have to be occupied with Focus attacks left and right, not to mention the game is UNBALANCED. Sagat is (as always and forever will be) unbalanced and a friggen beast. Balrog/Mike Byson has high priority, speed, strength, and antiprojectile capabilities, he doesn’t even NEED that EX bull to dodge projectiles, he has his headbutt. Vega is a bitch with those aerial moves that are irritating because one is unblockable and if you jump or duck, you’re screwed in all possible ways because he can stop and slash you instead, Akuma can kill you within 2 combos (The first causing you to be stunned), and Shoryukens? Don’t get me started on those, I mean, I thought they were suppose to be used for antiair purpose, but now they’re just a fucking mess, especially Ken’s which takes 1/4th of your health. The console characters suck too.