Super Street Fighter IV Won't Battle On PCs

[C117]

Why can't they just release it as a bunch of DLC's? I know I'd buy them...

 

[Evilsanta]

Awww...I really liked SF4...I did play at a friends house and damn it was fun.

Though it isnt the first Capcom game on PC to be pirated...Stupid Capcom i want SSF4 on PC damn it!

Though i would have to wait as i am broke thanks to the a bank screw up...

 

[tzimize]

wait... it was successful on the PC, but because it was pirated more ont he PC than the xbox or PS3 (ya, go figure.. that's going to happen capcom, have you ever developed for all platforms before?) they aren't gonna release the next one? Have to "protect the IP?" Pretty retarded thought process in my eyes....

Not really.
If they sold, hypothetically, 200,000 copies on the PC, but it was downloaded 200,000 times?
That's as much as they sold in potential revenue gone. Even if only 10% of those who downloaded it would have bought it if it wasn't available via piracy, that's an extra 20,000 in units sold.

So, rather then allow people to get a game for free that they don't deserve, they'd just pull it.
That's the effect of piracy. Eventually big companies are just going to get tired of wasting money on DRM, and just say 'screw it' and give up on the platform. PC Gaming will never die, of course, that's silly. PC gaming is huge, undeniably. But here is a perfect example of the effect of piracy. It's not all DRM and Securom.
Sometimes it's simply no game.

Congrats on applying stupid logic. I dont mean to be rude but I cant describe it in any other way.

So: instead of releasing the game on PC and selling 200 000 units (this equals actual money earned btw)
Rather: not release the game and be 100% certain of earning ZERO dollars off the PC version

Great business thinking right there.

Potential revenue is just that. POTENTIAL. There is NO telling if ANYONE of the pirates would have bought it at ANY point in time. They have some POTENTIAL revenue they didnt bring in, but they also have a lot of ACTUAL revenue. What IS possible to tell is that if they released SSF4 on PC, SOMEONE would have bought it. Meaning money EARNED which is what its all about.

If their speculations point to the conversion from PS3/Xbox360 to PC costing more than their projected sales on the other hand...thats a reason to not release it. And an understandable one.

Companies (and some people) need to get their heads our of their asses and realize that a pirated game does NOT mean 50$ that they didnt earn. Apply the logic to cars. Would you download one? I sure would. Are there enough money in the WORLD to pay for the cars that would be downloaded if it was possible? No. If gamers were supposed to pay for all the pirated games...I guess by the estimations of gaming companies we are all billionaires. I sure as hell am not that.

I dont know about you (or capcom) but if I was running a business I'd rather have actual money than potential money.

I personally dont care about this since fighting games have as little room on my PC as shooters have on my PS3, but sucks for the few that wanted it on PC.

 

[Eduku]

What baffles me is that they say this, and then proceed to release Dead Rising 2 and Lost Planet 2 on the PC anyway.

Also, there is the fact that the PC version is '99%' done. Minimal costs in porting it, and the original SFIV was a 'strong seller', despite piracy, all point to Capcom standing to profit from this.

I am so very confused.

 

[sramota]

Great, scapegoating.
...And selling themselves short..?

I'm no economics wiz, but earning a buck is an infinitely larger percentage of money earned than not earning a buck..

And they choose to not earn a buck because... They didn't earn two bucks the first time..?

Let's take that again.. Because they only earned one buck when they hoped for two, they decide to not earn another buck..?

And this for a game they're already milking by adding "Super" and some DLC content..?


Could someone fire that economics department and hire a bunch of chimps? Please?
And I think we need a picture of a farmer with a cow udder up his nose to caption "UR DOIN IT WRONG!!!" in here....

 

[Jared]

Thats a shame...would have loved to have a fo on my PC, I was kinda goping for it

 

[CitySquirrel]

Congrats on applying stupid logic. I dont mean to be rude but I cant describe it in any other way.

So: instead of releasing the game on PC and selling 200 000 units (this equals actual money earned btw)
Rather: not release the game and be 100% certain of earning ZERO dollars off the PC version

Great business thinking right there.

Potential revenue is just that. POTENTIAL. There is NO telling if ANYONE of the pirates would have bought it at ANY point in time. They have some POTENTIAL revenue they didnt bring in, but they also have a lot of ACTUAL revenue. What IS possible to tell is that if they released SSF4 on PC, SOMEONE would have bought it. Meaning money EARNED which is what its all about.

If their speculations point to the conversion from PS3/Xbox360 to PC costing more than their projected sales on the other hand...thats a reason to not release it. And an understandable one.

Companies (and some people) need to get their heads our of their asses and realize that a pirated game does NOT mean 50$ that they didnt earn. Apply the logic to cars. Would you download one? I sure would. Are there enough money in the WORLD to pay for the cars that would be downloaded if it was possible? No. If gamers were supposed to pay for all the pirated games...I guess by the estimations of gaming companies we are all billionaires. I sure as hell am not that.

I dont know about you (or capcom) but if I was running a business I'd rather have actual money than potential money.

I personally dont care about this since fighting games have as little room on my PC as shooters have on my PS3, but sucks for the few that wanted it on PC.

The point you (and the other posters in your giant quote tree) are missing is that companies are required to defend their copyrights. They can't appear to selectively defend it, because then people could argue that they have allowed it to be used in the common domain. Hence, "Capcom needs to protect the the Street Fighter IV IP, which means the company feels that it can't let the game be considered "free" on any platform." This has nothing to do with spite and heads in asses... it has to do with the very strict, and admittedly arcane, terms of copyright law.

p.s. You could just say "bad" logic instead of "stupid" if you were really sorry to use that term. Don't apologize for things facetiously.

 

[fulano]

They would do well to use Steam since any other DRM will be easily cracked and distributed. If they market it appropriately as a great fighting game boundled with a strong online suite they'd do just fine enough to generate good profits.

Yeah, the game would be pirated eventually but those that do wouldn't be able to play online which in the end is what keeps the game fresh on the long run, and if they found a way around it they would quickly get nerfed by an update. Which is what makes it worth shedding the cash in the first place. Kinda like playing TF2 or L4D, or Starcraft 2 with battle.net. That's what capcom should aim at.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Because no-one pirates games on consoles. Only on the PC.

Just like no-one plays shooters on the PC.

*rolls eyes*

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

That's the effect of piracy.

I disagree.
That's what they call the effect of piracy. I find it difficult to believe that Capcom can track all these pirates but can't protect against them.

What would be more advantageous for them to say is "It's because of Piracy" and not have to prove it. Then they could stop developing for the PC for any number of reasons, because they know you can't actually stop Piracy anyway.

I don't see a huge amount of effort going into protecting the Street Fighter IP in MUGEN, for instance.

 

[Prof. Monkeypox]

A message to pirates: "Everyone hates you."

See, this way PC gaming can't have nice things...

 

[Lordmarkus]

First things first, who would want to play Street Fighter 4 on a PC? Aren't the whole concept of fighting games to button mash a controller and having vs matches in comfy couch? Which nothing that the PC delivers.

Secondly: Why did they even bother to release it on PC? When previous PC-only genres get pulled from the plattform we get a new genre that would never work properly.

 

[fulano]

That's the effect of piracy.

I disagree.
That's what they call the effect of piracy. I find it difficult to believe that Capcom can track all these pirates but can't protect against them.

What would be more advantageous for them to say is "It's because of Piracy" and not have to prove it. Then they could stop developing for the PC for any number of reasons, because they know you can't actually stop Piracy anyway.

I don't see a huge amount of effort going into protecting the Street Fighter IP in MUGEN, for instance.

They don't want to lose revenue. Losing revenue is bad for bussiness. That's it. They don't have to prove anything.

You make it look as if evil Capcom was looking for the first excuse to drop development for the PC. Also, MUGEN hardly compromises their abilities to make money.

It is more solid busisnes for them to develop for consoles.

 

[Abedeus]

You do realize that will change anything, correct?

If they want to pirate it, download a 360 emulator, and emulate the game on 360.

You've really changed nothing at all, except make it only accessible on PC for pirates.

Good job retards.

Well obviously.

Except that on a machine with dual core 3.2GHz and Radeon 5770 it's hard to emulate PS2 and play games like God of War. Emulating Xbox would be just as hard. 360 emulator is a wild fantasy for now. But in 3-5 years, with the introduction of 8+ cores on CPUs and over 12GHz RAM on every machine and SLI/Crossfire everywhere... Why not.

Also, they probably won't admit the game sold poorly, so they blame it on pirates.

 

[Ne1butme]

SF4 on the PC was actually the best version. Had better graphics and the ability to mod the costumes. There were some very cool models. I got the PC bundle that came with the mad-catz controller. A damn good 6 button d-pad controller for fighting games.

I'm really irritated about SSF4 not the PC. As a lot of people have said, just release it through steam. The article didn't mention this, but the arcade version is running on a directx machine, ie a PC. the Port is done. completely done.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

*Spy* What did they expect?

 

[Eduku]

First things first, who would want to play Street Fighter 4 on a PC? Aren't the whole concept of fighting games to button mash a controller and having vs matches in comfy couch? Which nothing that the PC delivers.

Is this a serious question? I can't tell if you're being highly sarcastic or not. I'll assume you aren't for the purposes of this answer:

SFIV PC was a 'strong seller', so clearly, a lot of people. You can connect controllers to a PC. SFIV PC has multiplayer (online and offline). You can connect a PC to a large monitor or television.