A couple of months before the arrival of Street Fighter IV last year, I got into a conversation about the game with a friend on the X-box 360. He was very excited about the upcoming release and told me that the game would be the ultimate Street Fighter. I was lukewarm about SFIV because of its regressive development - the fact that it was more of a remake than a true sequel - and I made a mention that Capcom may be milking the game for all of its worth by releasing revisions after revisions in the near future like what they did to Street Fighter II. My friend thought that I was crazy, that something like that could only happen in the 90's. Well, here we are not even a year after the release of SFIV and Super Street Fighter IV will soon replace the first version of the game.
SSFIV for the PC is still not listed yet on popular online merchants like Amazon.com.
Once again, Capcom wants to make their money primarily from console owners.
Just like the release of SFIV, Capcom has been hush-hush about the PC version of SSFIV. Having learned my lesson from last time, I am going to hold off from buying one of the console releases of course. We all know that the PC release is going to be superior compared to the X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. The real question is, will Capcom make the right move for PC owners? This is what I mean by that: It is possible for Capcom to release a big patch to "update" the PC version of the game. Such distribution would also be made much easier because the game is already under the Games for Windows Live service. Heck, it would even be possible for them to do so with the console versions. They can still charge their $39.99 for the additional content - which will hopefully be priced at $29.99 for the PC if the common practice were to be followed. Realistically though, the price should be cheaper because in a sense, we have already paid a bulk of the money buying the first version of the game in the first place. Post-release patches are so common these days that they are expected to happen. It's also okay to update a game with huge new contents and revisions and instead of selling the revised title again as a "separate" game, it could just be an addition to the game that has already been released. The main issue for developers is probably the expected price reduction I mentioned earlier.
After charging us for the "extra" costumes in SFIV, those costumes will be readily
made available in SSIV in addition to just 1 other new costume. Pro-milking at its best.
Most of the data is already in the original disc but even if one may argue that having the new content come as a separate title is a good thing because one wants to keep the original SFIV just the way it was made, the additional content doesn't have to overwrite the original game. With the new content downloaded, an option can be made available at the title screen where the player can choose to play the first game or the second revision of the game. It's not too late to do this for SSFIV for the consoles but of course, that would probably not happen at this point. With the PC version still shrouded in mystery, I would like to think that Capcom would revolutionize how these kind of game updates would be handled in the distant future. It would certainly be a historical move.
We can blame Capcom for starting the milking trend in fighting games.
If they would make SSFIV a downloadable update, games like BlazBlue will follow suit.
BlazBlue's new revision contain balance tweaks and only two additonal characters
and if the trend doesn't stop, it will be released on a separate disc as planned.
1 comment:
I think its awful how gamers are treated when it comes to content of games and pricing.
For me its simple. Do I like the game enough to want it again. Yes, but for the causal gamer, if you got it once, there's no need to get it again.
Post a Comment