Ultra Street Fighter IV

New Stuff
-Balance Updates
-5 New Characters (Hugo, Rolento, Poison, Elena and one more character to be announce later in the year. Said character has never been in an SF game before.)
-New characters brought from SFxT will receive changes to fit SF4 and be better characters
-6 New Stages
-New Costumes (If you pre-order the disc version, you get 4 of the costumes for the new characters free)
-New Modes (None have been named yet)
-Other stuff to be announced

Yes, 4 of the new characters have been ripped from SFxT, yes they are getting changes. The stages might be too, but who honestly knows? The update is supposed to be released early 2014 and is coming out for PS3, Xbox 360 and Steam.

$15 for the DLC Update
$40 for the Disc Version which comes with all of the costumes in all of the previous versions of SFIV and any costumes to be announced

you need to fix the youtube link

the added character showcase wasn't very thrilling

Capcom need to just make SF4 f2p and charge for stages, costumes and music. This is getting ridiculous.

Neo wrote:

Capcom need to just make SF4 f2p and charge for stages, costumes and music. This is getting ridiculous.

This is how fighting games work. No one wants an F2P model because that would end up costing more and more goes into these games than just character, stage, and music additions. That's like saying "Hey pay money for just a balance change" which they didn't do with AE2012 because it was just balance changes.

Mr. Footsies wrote:

the added character showcase wasn't very thrilling

They announced this like yesterday and they've got a good while before the game comes out. They probably don't have the new moves, ultras and supers set yet, so by the time they make another trailer it should show a lot more. Capcom's pretty good with trailers that show off their games.

I'm hoping for a nice Ken buff.

Anyway, I wonder if I'll be able to upgrade my normal SSFIV disc without the AE DLC to Ultra SSFIV and get the AE content. That would be absolutely worth a buy for me. $15 for effectively 9 characters and the extra content. Most likely, it will be like UMVC3 and the Jill/Shuma DLC, but the former would be great.

You're not going to be able to because that's not how update DLC works. You need AE if you want to upgrade to Ultra because Yun, Yang, Oni, and ERyu are going to be in Ultra. The game's not gonna install AE for you, it installs Ultra. You might as well just buy the Disc version of Ultra at that rate.

If it were F2P it'd only cost more if you wanted every single stage, costume, bonus mode etc... As long as characters and balance changes are free the game essentially costs nothing if you don't care about cosmetic changes. This is how dota 2 works and Valve probably makes a lot more money than Capcom does.

Neo wrote:

Capcom need to just make SF4 f2p and charge for stages, costumes and music. This is getting ridiculous.

That makes no sense at all, when referring to fighting games.  This especially doesn't make sense if you take into account the individual prices they could charge for this.  Now I know you don't play fighting games, but if you do you need every character as you need how to fight against all the different types of character, not having them available is not an option.

The expansion isn't much to pay and considering individual character have cost as much as 5 dollars and here you are paying for new characters, stages, balance updates.

Tekken Revolution a Free to play game charged for stages and characters.  If you get into a free 2 play game of this type you are almost certainly going to pay more than you would for even a free retail title on that game you can't even have the option to fight locally, because they need to do everything possible to encourage people to play online so they get money.  I could go into excessive detail, but it would sound like a rant.

EDIT: Also DOTA is a mod they didn't have to put much money into expansion as its from warcraft or whatever.

Dota 2 is a standalone game that was built from scratch, not to mention that new characters that were never in the mod version are being made and will be free for everyone when they're released. Don't get confused between a shitty F2P model (paying for characters) and a good one (paying for cosmetics).

Neo wrote:

Dota 2 is a standalone game that was built from scratch, not to mention that new characters that were never in the mod version are being made and will be free for everyone when they're released. Don't get confused between a shitty F2P model (paying for characters) and a good one (paying for cosmetics).

Well what fighting game models have you seen and could you put to use here?

Do you have a problem with DLC? Do you not like the idea that people can expand or get a standalone model and get previous DLC for free (there is absolutely no reason to add in cosmetics as these have become a paid for thing now)? Do you not like the idea of people selling there games to then effectively not pay much at all on this new game? Do you think people who make balance patches for games shouldn't be paid for that? Do you really think the console market and PC market are that similar?

Why does the model need to be any different than what I've already detailed? Free characters + updates, a free stage or two and extra stages, costumes etc can be bought separately. If you only care about the gameplay and fundamental mechanics you get a free game, if you want to tart up your characters or play with a different styled background you can pay to do so. Why the fuck should balance changes cost money when the game is supposed to be competitive?

Neo wrote:

Why does the model need to be any different than what I've already detailed? Free characters + updates, a free stage or two and extra stages, costumes etc can be bought separately. If you only care about the gameplay and fundamental mechanics you get a free game, if you want to tart up your characters or play with a different styled background you can pay to do so. Why the fuck should balance changes cost money when the game is supposed to be competitive?

Just because something works on one game doesn't mean it will work for everything.  The PC and console markets are inherently different.  I'm not really sure why you're acting like it works on DOTA so it has to work on every other game.  What about games that aren't so popular?  Do you really think they'd get back the amount of money going into the game.

Free to play games normally have lower production values, now you can tell me that DOTA 2 was built from the ground up, but it looks similar to me.  The initial amount of money going into that project would have been from a huge profit on the first DOTA most likely.  Like I am genuinely surprised when people act like companies are acting in any other way than to get the most profit possible.

So let me ask you this, do you think Capcom will profit more from the currrent model (which i pointed out is not actually assholish or anything compared to what this easily could be like) or from a free to play model and if you were designing the business model for capcom would you genuinely go the free to play model even if it meant you made a lot less money?

I'm not saying this is the best stance for a consumer what Capcom is doing, but I certainly think its a decent deal from a street fighter fans perspective.  I didn't purchase SF4 or SSF4AE, but I did buy SSF4 and I will purchase this one definitely.  Honestly I think the people most likely to complain about this don't even like street fighter all that much, which makes even less sense as the games are budget titles.  If this came out full price I'd probably pass or await a price drop.

OH and BTW I should point out that Capcom make a huge profit on DLC, they esily could get away with selling characters also fighting games are coming out with a free to play model where you buy the characters individually there's a few out already like this and more on the way.  So its a very realistic model for fighting games going F2P so I don't really see any reason why that wouldn't be the standard.

EDIT: Also money going into a disc copy of a game I can sell and get my money back. I think thats a huge advantage. Also means I can access content in game without a grindfest that is present in most F2P games.

DOTA was a 100% free mod (as long as you owned WC3) supported by advertising on the modders website. Dota 2 was independently funded by Valve, who hired the modder, and built the game from scratch on a new engine. Literally everything was paid for and made by Valve, everything had to be remade from scratch because all the original assets belong to Blizzard, the developers of Warcraft 3. The production values are on par, if not higher, than the majority of games that are released today.

To give you an idea of how much Valve makes off Dota 2, they've been running a promotion where for every sale of a $10 item on their store they will contribute $2.50 to the prize pool for an upcoming tournament they're hosting. The current prize pool is more than $2,500,000. That means that, before the prize contribution, Valve have made $10m off that item alone. I'm pretty sure they make more money than Capcom does off SF4 with a F2P model that gives you access to everything that affects gameplay the moment you start playing.

It would be easy to apply the same model to a fighting game, the temptation to lock character behind a paywall would have to be resisted as the second you do that you essentially eliminate any chance for that game to be featured in a tournament, something that Capcom would never want as it's a huge amount of free advertising for them.

So basically, Capcom would probably make more money off a F2P model while keeping their game competitive and giving the consumer who only cares about gameplay a much better deal. how can anyone argue with that?

I see your point. But exactly what was this $10 item that was available on DOTA and was it genuinely something a lot of people would have bought and could it be applied to a fighting game. Ten dollars for an in game item seems excessive. Honestly I'd be very hesitant to buy DLCs at that price.

I really don't think just charging for cosmetics would be profitable for Capcom, because the biggest audience for these updates don't care about cosmetics. Watch SF4 or Marvel at Evo, everyone picks the training stage. Every time. If those guys got everything necessary to just play the game for free, they wouldn't spent another dollar.

It basically unlocks a lot of functionality for the tournament in question. Anyone can watch the matches but when you have the item you're eligible for prizes (for example if you witness a double kill or something), you get a few cosmetic items ingame no matter what, some of which will change in appearance when you watch more of the matches, it lets you vote on which 10 players you want to be in an 'All Stars' match and allows you to place predictions on certain things (ie: biggest killstreak) with the opportunity to win prizes if you're correct.

EDIT: It isn't all pre-purchase stuff, all the predictions and things related to spectating came into effect for the qualifiers, which started about a week after the item went on sale.

I don't know how something like that could work on a current gen console (it would probably be easy next gen though) but the point I was making was that it's just one item and there's a shitload of cosmetics you can buy, if you're so inclined, that have probably made a lot more than $10m collectively.

They do run on the expensive side, with the cheapest 'sets' of items for a single character being about $7 and single items being $1, but I think that just goes to show that some people really do buy this stuff if it's available - enough to fund a game that's updated on a weekly basis like Dota 2. Very few pro players (pro being defined as they make money off the game) buy cosmetics and Moose is right that it would probably be the same with a fighting game, however they are ultimately the minority and it stands to reason that if there are people who buy all the costume packs for SF4 there are people who would buy microtransaction cosmetics too.

It's not a sure thing, as it's never been tried in a fighting game before, but all it takes is one company to give it a shot. Most likely SF4 won't be the game where it happens but all it takes it one and, if it's done correctly, it could be extremely successful.

Actually Moose makes a really good point most people don't buy jack in street fighter, Ken out of his red gi and ryu not in white always feels wrong. I weren't a fan of the training stage but everyone online chose it.

This would most likely be a lot more complicated. Also you got to keep in mind accessorie on tiny characters compared to accessories on characters who will be seen close up (if you've seen ultra moves you'll know what I mean), probably makes it difficult to just have craploads of available items in a lottery style situation like that.

Quote :

Tekken Revolution a Free to play game charged for stages and characters.

They don't charge for characters or stages. Harada is against DLC characters.
They charge for coupons to play arcade and online ranked. Training mode and online player matches are also free.

Golden Boy wrote:

Quote :

Tekken Revolution a Free to play game charged for stages and characters.

They don't charge for characters or stages. Harada is against DLC characters.
They charge for coupons to play arcade and online ranked. Training mode and online player matches are also free.

Thats not true player matches finished up my tickets.

Really? I thought you didn't need coins or coupons for player matches.

Golden Boy wrote:

Really? I thought you didn't need coins or coupons for player matches.

Unless that was patched recently. I played this close to launch i think. I was ok with the whole idea until I noticed that and then i basically thought F* it i'll just grab TTT2 at some point.

Okay so the argument is basically that Capcom give the characters and balance updates for free? No, that's dumb. The characters are where the bulk of the work of the game goes into, Capcom is not giving them away for free with the idea that "OH THE COSMETICS WILL MAKE US MORE THAN THE ACTUAL GAME EVER COULD!" Capcom is not Valve, Fighting games are not Dota, Evo is the World Cyber Games or whatever shit it is that PC Gamers obsess over and waste their lives getting the US to verify them as athletes. You cannot apply an F2P model in any way to a fighting game that you would a game like Dota or whatever. It doesn't work for a myriad of reasons. The biggest audience is not going to buy the cosmetic stuff if you at all consider them, Capcom is not going to make enough money from the sales of costumes, stages, and modes because the thing the people care about most is characters. Sure, they'll make some money from it, but not nearly enough to recoup the costs.

On top of that, F2P models, no matter what they're applied to would be hell for tourney organizers. Sometimes these tourneys have consoles with costumes, sometimes they don't, hell the UMVC3 tournament had trouble with a dude who wanted to play Jill and Shuma because no one ever picks them. You can't just give away characters for free, that's a dumb business decision, because no one will ever buy the cosmetic stuff. That's like saying you should make all of the characters in Marvel Heroes playable, but make all of the costumes and crap buyable.  Fighting games cannot be treated like other games, fucking other FG companies are already trying this crap and doing a bad job of it. KI is going to have some dumb F2P alike, DoA5 is getting this with Ultimate which will make people care even less about the game, and Tekken Revolution is a joke of a game with it's dumb gimmicks, although it's arguably come the closest to being the least stupid since it gives you all of the characters and you can unlock more and the most you have to pay for is tickets which makes it like an arcade.

Fighting games cannot be treated like other games, they are their own beast.

You can hardly say that other companies are "trying this crap" when literally nobody has tried what I'm suggesting. I don't really care about all the bad F2P models in gaming, I know there's a lot of them but it's completely besides the point because what I'm suggesting is not one of them.

There's a couple things that need to be addressed:

• The argument about players only caring about the characters can be made for Dota, or any other game with a similar F2P model. That same argument is probably the reason why F2P has taken so long to become popular, however the numbers consistently debunk it and the surge in new F2P games goes to show how successful the model really is, despite all apparent logic.
  
• It seems obvious that people wouldn't spend as much money on a game that has all the meaningful content unlocked for free, and yet the complete opposite has been proven in multiple cases.
  
• With most existing F2P models, most players don't spend a cent. The vast majority of income comes from a comparative handful of 'whales' who spend above and beyond what they would on a normal game. There's data that supports this but I honestly can't be bothered looking it up.
  
• Cosmetic DLC is not for pro players (see the above point), but considering that all the characters would be unlocked and all cosmetics included in the base game/updates I can't see any compatibility issues arising.

To be honest I think a game needs to come out with a model like this just to prove that it works, I can only hope that the FGC's inflammatory nature doesn't cause it to bomb just because it's a F2P game. Basically, don't knock it 'til you try it.

What's FGC?