Capcom's Yoshionori Ono spoke at length with The Guardian. Topics mostly revolve around the 3DS version of Super Street Fighter 4, but they get into the overall design philosophy Ono is aiming for in the future and even touch on Street Fighter X Tekken.Is it difficult to move toward the mainstream without alienating those hardcore fans?
A quick metaphor: think of the Premier League. When Manchester United play Chelsea, you have the most professional, skilful players taking part, so any kid just out of school can't join that team. However, just because not everyone can play for Manchester United doesn't mean no one plays football. Until recently, we only ever aimed Street Fighter at the high end, we've been neglecting people who want to play at their own level. So what we've done with Super Street Fighter IV 3D is, we've retained the hardcore elements, but we've lowered the entry barrier, so people can play in the way they want to play, rather than having to aspire to be hardcore. We've established a very important milestone here.
Were there difficulties bringing over any of the moves or characters to the 3DS screen?
There were technical issues with the speedy characters who move across the screen very quickly. It became difficult to identify whether it was the character moving or the background scrolling. What saved us, though, was the 3D vision. Because there's now a depth to the background, it's very easy to find out if it's the character or scenery that's moving. It's pretty much perfect.
Nice that Ono knows who Manchester United are, he totally didn't prepare for that.
And no, they didn't ever just cater for premier players. What he neglected to answer is how they'll not alienate the 'hardcore' fanbase, which suggests they're quite happy to do so.
@4 Endgame:
Hardcore fanbase is extremely important with this type of games. Why do we all keep checking eventhubs? We want to see the matches of the pro player, the combo's that hardcore players figured out and the glitches and secrets that the diehards found.
If there wasn't any hardcore fanbase, the fighting genre will stop growing. Look at super smash bros brawl, it's a great game and it generated so much hype when it got released and now it's totally in the background. Not enough depth, no hardcore potential, just a (very very very good) 'party' game. Street Fighter, marvel and tekken are in the spotlights a lot.
"the loud small percentage" those loud people generate a lot of hype for the game.
@5 I agree! It's just my take, but I think the people trying to turn Smash Brothers (any of them) into a hardcore game by turning off items and changing the map to FD were.. well, pretty much grasping straws. I doubt that's what Nintendo had in mind when they were designing the game.
It's the die hard fans who discover interesting tactics about the game, but it's also up to the developers of the game itself to put the tools in place for those elements to shine. I'm definitely gonna give that one to Capcom. They know how to make a solid fighting game, and the SF4 series is no exception.
fugg casual/fairweather fans
all their gonna do is complain about the game, say so-and-so needs to be nerfed then after 3 months of getting ripped apart online they're gonna back to play COD or whatever shooter is out, thus leaving us with a game geared toward noobs and toddlers.
*rant over*
*drinks lemonade*
@#8
Ironically it's often , the hardcore or at least afficionados and self proclamated hardcore that b*tch about that kind of stuff first .
Right or not (irrelevant) , who do you think complained before even laying hands on the booth about yun and yang endlessly , before ssf4 AE got released around here or SRK ?
Most likely not the casual fan .
Who was speculating about balance and that XX guy being overpowered , right from alpha early builds of MVC3 ?
Wasnt J Wong one of the few to complain about sentinel too ?
Who rushed to make sentinel a default assist and part of their team online in mvc3 , precisely because they heard a few big name make a fuss about it ? Certainly not most beginners ...
Imo so far they've done a great job catering to both , especially with sf4/ssf4 overall .
Some of the naysayers are still there for it , even if complaining , some of the casuals actually became fans , and the die hard haters would hate it no matter what .
Nothing would escape being sacrificied upon the altar of their sf3 god anyway .
Just like some Guilty gear fans wouldnt like Blazblue no matter what .
@chibitenshin
You got that right except for the Smash Bros. Part
The game generated huge hype because the game itself was Fan service for the Nintendo Fans, not just Fighting fans, Right now its not top of the news like SSF4 and MvC3 but People consider it as an awesome game the wii has to offer and still play it today.
SSBB is a unique fighting system and not the regular fighting system which makes it stand out seperated from the others and not together which is why standard basics that apply to the "Fighting game Fans" dont on this one.
Also,dont call it a party game, its degrading and shows disrespect just because its not the same fighting system.
Ono punk ass needs to talk about when this MVC3 patch is gonna release. Tired of the BS people get away with.
@13 hotdiddykong
I meant it's more geared toward just having plain fun instead of training to make it more fun. It's easy to start with it and immediatly fun too play it. 'party game' wasn't the right word probably, but I didn't mean it in a bad way, that's why I said it's a very very very good game ;)
It's just that a lot of friends of mine turn on their WII at birthday etc for everyone to play.
Perhaps SSB needs a genre of its own ;p
That's a pretty fair assessment. The 3DS version sounds like it'd be more casual simply for the fact that it's on a handheld. You pretty much have to play with a pad, or the touch controls if that's your fancy.
I can also agree with what he's trying to say about making the entry barrier a little less restrictive for newcomers and more casual players. As long as the hardcore fundamentals and higher end techniques are still viable, then it's not necessarily going to alienate any playerbase. They'll just, in the hardcore player's case, continue to do their own thing, while new players can pick it up and not be afraid to do theirs. I think MvC3 is a good example of this with their different control schemes.
Though I'll admit, I am reserving judgement on how this may pan out in future fighting game releases.