Games that are not full games should not cost $40 dollars. Fuck L4D2, fuck SSF4. Unless there is significant enough changes to rightfully call the game a sequel, and a new game, then it should cost no more than $30.... I don't care if it's a content pack, a standalone game, an expansion, a DLC, or w/e...
Re-balancing should be a free update to the game, an unbalanced game is not at the fault of the consumer and we should not have to pay for that. (See: Blizzard Entertainment)
I'm perfectly OK with paying for new content, but you should always pay an amount of money proportional to the amount of new content and gameplay change.
Alright, here we go. You don't seem to understand how fighting games work, so let me give you a brief history lesson.
Street Fighter 2 was released in 1991. It featured 8 playable characters, and four boss characters. In April of 1992, Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting was released, which made all four boss characters playable. It also allowed pallet swapping: aka both players could choose the same character. This was a huge deal back then.
In December of 1992, Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting was released, which increased the game speed and gave new moves to all of the characters.
A full year later, Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers was released, which added four more playable characters. Then, in March of 1994, Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo was released, which added the mechanics of juggling and super combos.
Do you see a pattern here? Each of the games added new mechanics and improved on the previous entries, but were released roughly a year apart.
Capcom also released three entries in the Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter 3 series.
History lesson aside, many modern day gamers, especially those playing Street Fighter 4 on the PC, with no prior knowledge of this might see Super Street Fighter 4 as a ripoff, and claim it should be released as a free update or DLC. There are SOME huge problems with this.
Let's start at the beginning.
Let's pretend for a moment that there are NO new characters and no new gameplay mechanics like Tandem Cancelling or selectable Ultra Combos. We're talking about just an increase in game speed and re-balancing of the entire cast. It's important to note a key part of fighting games here: frame data. The frame data, or the specific properties of EVERY SINGLE MOVE in the game are tweaked. Some might get better recovery, some might hit more times, some might hit less times, others might link more easily, etc. Now, this alone means the entire game has been overhauled. A complete engine overhaul like this would mean a MASSIVE patch would be requiring, and the issue of actually patching fighting games is another problem I'll address in a moment. The short version: the core base of this game Capcom is targeting would flip shit if this game got constant updates and balance patches like an MMO (this is where your Blizzard analogy fails Chris).
Now, on top of that, there are ten new characters added to the engine. At this point, DLC becomes entirely out of the question. It's not possible. Although many people, as shown in this thread, don't get that new versions of Street Fighter are a give in with Capcom, it's really ridiculous to claim that this game is a rip off, should be all DLC, or even worse should be a free patch.
The other reason, as I alluded to earlier, is that the entire fighting game competitive scene is based upon the entire game being on one disc, easily distributable. If I'm running a tournament for Street Fighter 4, every single on of the games is going to be the same. "Balance patches" do not exist. The game is the way it is out of the box. That's the way it works, its the way it will always works. The "only" patch that modified gameplay was the removal of El Feurte's infinite loop, which is completely removed in Super Street Fighter 4, that's it.
Hopefully this will help you understand why this game is the way it is. If you think paying for a new version of a game with a balance overhaul, new characters, and new gameplay mechanics is stupid, then you're in the wrong genre of game all together.
Also, they should make it for PC because fuck consoles. And they need to do an arcade release, because that's where their roots are.
What? Consoles are a much better platform for fighting games then PCs dude. The ideal version would be an arcade cabinet, but arcades are basically dead in America.
Would this be a good game to get into the fighting game genre with?
In short, yes. However it takes a tremendous amount of practice to get good at, or develop good execution. Start with Ryu or Ken would be my advice. At any rate when SSF4 hits I'll post a thread with a lot of different resources to help learn fighting games.
