Super Street Fighter IV Won't Battle On PCs

[Baby Tea]

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.

You're right in that there is guaranteed loss of revenue, but then there is also guaranteed that no PC versions will be pirated. At what point do companies actually try to defend the product they just spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours to make? When is that acceptable?

If Capcom used horrific DRM, then people would complain, and legitimate customers would suffer.
If Capcom don't release on the PC, people would (will) complain.
If Capcom doesn't have any copy protection, then they watch something they just spent so much time and money on get copied and distributed for free by a bunch of greedy punks.

Pardon me if I'm not surprised by their response of 'screw it'.
Especially when PC sales were probably the lowest of the group, but probably had the highest piracy rate.

And, no, I wouldn't 'download a car'.
I have this crazy idea that you work to earn what you want, especially luxury items like video games, and pay for it if you can afford it. And if you can't afford it, then you do without it. You don't deserve video games because your friends have them, or because you can't afford them, or because they aren't sold in your area. Buy it, or live without it.

Pirates really need to get their heads out of their asses and realize that they aren't entitled to anything they can't pay for, and they are just greedy punks who cost the industry millions on wasted DRM research and application, which in turn harms the REAL customers. You know, the people who pay and keep the industry going so that these punks can get their free shit? Yeah, those customers.

 

[dududf]

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.

I'm jealous of your processor XD

 

[Eduku]

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.

Well, the arcade version is made on the same system as the one for Blazblue: Continuum Shift (or something along those lines), so chances are the arcade version will probably be leaked onto the PC anyway.

Oh, just FYI, Ono himself said that SFIV PC was a 'strong seller'.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

It's a shame things turned out this way. Street Fighter IV was the first fighting game in a long while that was available on the PC, which was a refreshing change of pace. Too bad they won't continue that support in spite of strong sales.

Hopefully, they might reconsider in the future, since it is very refreshing to see many Japanese companies finally getting behind the PC platform.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Similar to Tony Hawk, I've never been able to play fighters on PC. The controller feels more easily accessible for a game with very few buttons necessary.

 

[Dendio]

I wonder if this will set a precedent leading to future games being withheld from the pc platform. If the console makers design their next gen systems to better counter piracy, it'd be a strong incentive to make games exclusively to consoles.

 

[tzimize]

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.

You're right in that there is guaranteed loss of revenue, but then there is also guaranteed that no PC versions will be pirated. At what point do companies actually try to defend the product they just spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours to make? When is that acceptable?

If Capcom used horrific DRM, then people would complain, and legitimate customers would suffer.
If Capcom don't release on the PC, people would (will) complain.
If Capcom doesn't have any copy protection, then they watch something they just spent so much time and money on get copied and distributed for free by a bunch of greedy punks.

Pardon me if I'm not surprised by their response of 'screw it'.
Especially when PC sales were probably the lowest of the group, but probably had the highest piracy rate.

And, no, I wouldn't 'download a car'.
I have this crazy idea that you work to earn what you want, especially luxury items like video games, and pay for it if you can afford it. And if you can't afford it, then you do without it. You don't deserve video games because your friends have them, or because you can't afford them, or because they aren't sold in your area. Buy it, or live without it.

Pirates really need to get their heads out of their asses and realize that they aren't entitled to anything they can't pay for, and they are just greedy punks who cost the industry millions on wasted DRM research and application, which in turn harms the REAL customers. You know, the people who pay and keep the industry going so that these punks can get their free shit? Yeah, those customers.

Well, you elegantly omitted the part of my post that went like this:

"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."

I cannot for the life of me see one sane business manager go: "Yeah, we got this money we can earn here, but lets not because some people might pirate our game". Let me repeat: If their analysts say: We will definately NOT earn enough money on this to justify a conversion: Then it is a legitimate business reason to not convert it. If they project: Hey, we'll earn 10 million dollars on this, but we would rather earn 20 so we wont release it...then there is no logic to it.

It seems (from your tone, forgive me if I am wrong) that you assume I am a pirate. And occasionally I am. But it also seems you assume all pirates are dollarless punks living in their parents basement. Which they are not. I spend a LOT of money on digital entertainment. My steam catalogue is HUGE and my DVD/Blu-ray shelf is stocked with quality. I own a PS3 with quite a few games bought (not so much piracy on PS3). Hell, most of my budget apart from food/housing goes towards digital entertainment of some sort. I cant even remember the last time I bought a pair of new pants. I spend MUCH more than your average joe on the stuff valve, capcom, blizzard and several other companies produce.

It seems most companies desire to have a business practice that borders on scam. "Here! Buy our product! It has coop, no fee to play, awesome graphics and stellar gameplay!" *buys product* Wtf...this is nothing like advertised.... "Too bad, thanks for the 50$ idiot".

My problem is simply that a lot of producers make crap. And I dont KNOW that it is crap until I buy it. And I dont WANT to pay for crap, but I WANT to pay for good products, and I do. 95% of the movies in my shelf I bought ->after<- seeing them. Probably at least 75% of the games in my library I bought AFTER playing them (all the way through, not demos). This is money that would NOT have been spent if I had not known it was a good product. How did I find out you say? I'll let you work that one out, but there are a lot of companies that have EARNED money on my questionable Internet practices. Where are all these sales in their analyses? Hm?

It seems all companies and their "moral" supporters refuse to acknowledge this side of things, and I am 100% sure I am not alone in being like this. To me, Piracy is just another word for quality assurance.

But, this has gone comletely off-topic. Sorry for that. And again, sorry for the stupid logic comment, it was uncalled for.

 

[Eduku]

Similar to Tony Hawk, I've never been able to play fighters on PC. The controller feels more easily accessible for a game with very few buttons necessary.

You can connect a controller to a PC.

 

[veloper]

sales were strong on the PC, the platform was also "number one in piracy."

So they'd rather not make good money at all? Good to know.

Ono also explained that the piracy rate helped the game earn a high profile with PC gamers. However, in spite of this, 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.

What a clueless twat. No other company is going to rip off their precious SF4, just because pirates also have the game.

 

[Swifteye]

Oh well at least you can eventually get the characters on MUGEN.

Technically you already have half the roster if you play mugen.

 

[Raithnor]

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.

The problem is they are rapidly approaching a point where they can't defend the copyrights anyway. The only way a gaming company is going to survive in the future is if they host their own game servers. It would require people to log into the server everytime they want to play a game.

I'm at least glad to hear one way or the other. To be honest I felt sorry for the console people who shelled out the money for Street Fighter IV and then got hit with Super Street Fighter IV several months later. They could at least not try to sabotage sales of their own product.

 

[Flying-Emu]

Ugh this is so silly, they already stated somewhere else that the game was "essentially 99% finished" on the PC, so not releasing it now makes no sense, sure piracy might theoretically loose them a lot of their possible income from it, but by not releasing it they make NO income at all.

Oh and they were also asked if they would consider releasing it exclusively on Steam as a DRM platform if they were worried about piracy, and they said "No because that wouldn't be fair to people without access to Steam", so I guess it's more "fair" for NO-ONE to get to play it on PC?...

/facepalm

And it's not like Steam is a paid service. So anyone can make the download and have access to Steam.

 

[CitySquirrel]

The problem is they are rapidly approaching a point where they can't defend the copyrights anyway. The only way a gaming company is going to survive in the future is if they host their own game servers.

Why is this? (I'm not arguing, I just don't understand).

 

[Dr. Whiggs]

Do PC gamers realize they bring these things on themselves?

 

[Eduku]

Do PC gamers realize they bring these things on themselves?

Because all PC gamers are pirates, right?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

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

That's an insane argument. And faulty. If that was the case, they'd have to stop developing on all systems.

You make it look as if evil Capcom was looking for the first excuse to drop development for the PC.

I'm saying it's a very convenient excuse that no-one is going to be able to fight against or prove; while having little to no value.

Also, MUGEN hardly compromises their abilities to make money.

But does damage their IP, which is what they are allegedly upset about.

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

Why? Because they're pirated as much, but don't have modders who spend huge amounts of time making different skins for them?

Oh wait...you can't skin models on the consoles, can you? But you can on the PC...and that would definitely damage the IP...

Hmmmm.

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

Pirates really need to get their heads out of their asses and realize that they aren't entitled to anything they can't pay for, and they are just greedy punks who cost the industry millions on wasted DRM research and application, which in turn harms the REAL customers. You know, the people who pay and keep the industry going so that these punks can get their free shit? Yeah, those customers.

The biggest issue is that it's too easy to get caught up in the idea that "Piracy" equals "Theft," which is true, but an oversimplification. Piracy is a problem, but you're blanketing a large problem on a smaller audience. Everything contributes to problems in the industry. Not just the software pirates, or the used-game business, or the inflated prices, or anything. It's a lot of things, and the pirates are just a little part of a much bigger, much more complex problem.

For pirating itself, it's hard to make anything like this acceptable, but I can understand why people do it, even if it's not justifiable. It's hard to look at someone like Bobby Kotick, who makes more in a year than some people do in their entire lifetime [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/93781-How-Much-Money-Does-Bobby-Kotick-Make], and think that his all-powerful hand deserves to squeeze a $60,000-$90,000 annual salary just to play his soon-to-cost online multiplayer. Is it really fair for us that someone like this is calling the shots on prices and services. We can't look at his greed as anything but selfish, so why not do what little you can to stick it to "the man"?

I'd argue you're taking a painful step here in putting all pirates underfoot. I'm sure you've purchased a game pre-owned before, so theoretically, you're doing nothing different than the people whom you're accusing of not being real customers. Granted, you're paying for a product, but none of that money is seen by the developers. It goes to a reseller, much like you would get on eBay, or so on.

Really, there's plenty to say on the topic. The need for more demos, the need for less inflated prices on games, the prevalence of DRM issues, any number of problems that are everywhere. However, I do think you're being unfair overall. Sometimes, a door really is just a door. Take issue with individuals, not groups. There's too much stereotyping to be had if you do it any other way.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Especially when PC sales were probably the lowest of the group, but probably had the highest piracy rate.

Careful BT, that's an assumption without evidence. You know better than that.

 

[Raithnor]

The problem is they are rapidly approaching a point where they can't defend the copyrights anyway. The only way a gaming company is going to survive in the future is if they host their own game servers.

Why is this? (I'm not arguing, I just don't understand).

Given enough time someone will figure out a way to emulate console or crack a DVD's copy protection. It will get posted on the internet through the torrents and from there it will spread like wildfire. The movie and music industry already has this problem.

If I'm a large, multinational corporation and I'm in the business of selling games, I would look into alternative where I could more tightly control the distribution my game.

We're seeing shades of this now, services like XBox Live and Steam, and the emphasis on company controlled servers for online multiplayer at the expense of a single-player experience. Games would become a "service" rather than a "product" that could be duplicated and distributed by the end user.

At this point it could go either way. The market could adapt to this shift or the industry could collapse in on itself.

Personally, I'd be interested to see a study of the the effect of Marketing Budgets on the sales of a product. At what point does the return on sales get eclipsed by the amount spent on marketing the game.