Even with the disappointing sales of Street Fighter V between April and December of last year, Capcom still plans on supporting it for years to come, Capcom Europe COO Stuart Turner has revealed.
Speaking with Games Industry, Turner admitted that the Street Fighter V launch wasn’t great, but they’ve taken steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again:
I still believe the service game model is absolutely the thing for Street Fighter. It was always going to be a huge challenge to take a well loved brand from a traditional boxed product to a service game business model. The way a game like that is produced, developed, tested and marketed are all hugely different to a traditional boxed game.
I don’t think it would be wrong to say that we didn’t get much right with Street Fighter V at launch, we’ve learnt and put things in place that will avoid such issues ever arising in the future. Getting an offering that’s right for consumers first should be always be our priority.
Turner continued by saying Street Fighter V is “hitting its stride,” and “there are seasons of content to come and we still have support plans for the title for many more years.” He concluded, “After a difficult start Street Fighter V is in a very good place now.”
Capcom is currently working on Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, which is scheduled for release later this year on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. According to Turner, its broad appeal will help attract more people to the fighting genre:
Marvel vs Capcom fits into this as a great introduction to the genre as a whole, far more simplistic and technically easier to pick up and play, and obviously having some of the best known characters on the planet from the Marvel Universe has huge appeal especially to that younger new audience we’re keen to bring in.
Kolin came to Street Fighter V in February, and Capcom says you can expect news on the four remaining fighters in Season 2 every other month. Also, at the end of April, a new balance update will go live in Street Fighter V that aims to strengthen some of the weaker characters:
As you’ll see, our goal is not to weaken the stronger cast members, but to strengthen those who we felt weren’t faring as well as would like to see.
We feel that with these adjustments, we should see a lot more variety as players will be able to specialize in the characters they feel are fun, while also feeling empowered. That said, expect matches to be a bit more challenging as the balance between the cast will become that much tighter.
You can see everything they have planned for the balance update over here.
[Source: Games Industry, Capcom Unity]
