So here are a few different options that people have laid out for the reasoning behind Capcom’s latest SF tweet regarding S4.
1. Capcom is testing the waters to see if people would pay individually for characters over a season pass. They may want to collect this data for SFVI to see if it’s a worth wild business opportunity. This is something
@Thunderhead and I discussed a little bit last night.
2. New characters can be obtained via loot boxes (Menat’s game) or through purchase. This may lead into the f2p model.
3. Capcom just isn’t finished with S4 and announcing the S4 roster puts them in a place of commitment. Knowing how vocal the SF community is, if Capcom doesn’t adhere to their release plan they would face some major backlash from the community.
4. Only a few characters (less than 6 or even 1) will be released in S4 with support for SFV ending early.
5. And of course, I still think they could possibly release Story Mode v2 with the S4 roster in it but for individual purchase only.
I agree with many people that Capcom just does not have the pulse of the community correct. They did a fabulous job with announcements recently (AE & EVO) and then completely dropped the ball with Capcom Cup. I don’t know if it’s a culture thing or not, but they could have done a better job announcing future plans at their largest and most important tournament of the year. They made fans skim through their words to confirm other characters are coming instead of showing Kage and saying something like “Stay Tuned for More Character News!”
The ads are a whole other topic of conversation. Quite possibly Capcom’s biggest blunder since the launch of the game.
To give anyone here some form of hope, this was posted by a Reddit user and IMO holds some weight. The SF dev team was busy in 2018 and a lot busier than I gave them credit for before I read this.
“Keep in mind, they released SEVEN characters within a year...released two of those characters at the same time...fixed input lag...developed arcade cabinets with multiple location tests...patched the game THREE times...created a billion costumes...added Dojo functionality...all while running the biggest FG tour in the world for the 3rd time, with more than $600,000 on the line.
And, CPT 2019 is already confirmed, so they're still working even NOW.
They've been VERY busy this year. They straight up never stopped working on this 3 year old game. So, I can imagine their next wave of content being unfinished at the moment.”
