Follow up on the Street Fighter 4 character poll and mod chips

Why wasn't Dudley included in the official Street Fighter 4 character poll as an option? If he won the previous poll, he should have been up there.

Seth: [...] As far as I can tell, this entire thread is based on some kind of confusion about official polls. There was only ever one of them (the one posted to the main Capcom blog). The results were as posted earlier in this thread, and we followed through on the character to include.

I understand you're a big fan of Dudley, but he wasn't included on the poll because that wasn't a character the team was considering. Popularity is a factor in terms of who to include, but it's very far from the ONLY factor. The team is also interested in a good variety of playstyles, a fit for the storyline, etc. (and of course just who they personally like).

As for who was included on the poll, yes, some of the characters on the poll were already at some stage of development (such as Cammy, and you've almost certainly seen the material about T. Hawk, etc.). Does that mean the poll didn't change anything? Hardly. "In development" can mean a lot of things. As you can see, T. Hawk and DeeJay did not get into the game, and Cammy did.

What is Capcom's stance on mod chips?

Sven: Mod chips are a definite, definite no, no. I'm sorry if that means that at times content isn't available to you, but there are reasons why those situations exist (and it's not to spite you the consumer, really).

That said, digital distribution is helping to reduce barriers to these sorts of things. Without DD, games like Fate: Unlimited Codes on PSP never would have come to the West at all. For the industry, I foresee DD increasingly being a solution for these sorts of issues, not mod chips (which, as you well know, for most people aren't used for buying imports).