What's up with the load times on Playstation 3 version of Street Fighter IV?

Seth: The recently shown builds were final in terms of contents, but were not actual retail discs. They are development ROM discs, which play on development kits.

Dev kit units are known to be a bit trickier than retail, and things occasionally have odd glitches there, but regardless of any she-said, he-said nonsense, when everything is working right, nobody noticed any differences between PS3 and Xbox load times (this was explicitly measured by Gamespot during TGS, since they couldn't find any graphical differences to complain about, but they didn't see load time differences either).

Capcom had PS3 and Xbox SFIV running literally side by side all week at CES with no shame -- if there had been some loading difference between the two the hundreds of press who came through would have been all over it, and we might have even tried to avoid putting the two machines near one another.

We didn't because the game loads perfectly fast on both systems, especially if you opt for the installation on PS3.

Is an install required for the PS3 version of SFIV?

Seth: The install is optional, for those who want to shave a sliver off of load times between matches :)

The Tournament Edition FightStick isn't available for pre-order on some sites anymore, what's up?

Seth: What's going on is pretty simple. The best stick on the market is also turning out to be the most popular. Since they didn't make a billion of these things, they're starting to be pretty hard to find.

The Capcom Store here is supposed to have a healthy shipment coming in, though I'm not sure when they'll go on sale -- just check back on the store regularly and I'm sure they'll pop up in the near future for pre-order.

IGN said the PC release date of SFIV is Feb. 17, 2009, that true?

Seth: The IGN date is not correct, and the PC version will indeed be later than the console version. Often those dates are automatically generated based on limited information, rather than some kind of insider reveal.

If they DO have that kind of insider/leaked info, you'll find it in a headline, not an after-thought-ish release date box. Same goes for the Gamespot date, as we've made no announcement regarding specific PC release date.

It's clear Tatsunoko vs. Capcom didn't do so well in the first weeks.

Would that be the only factor to determine whether the game was successful or not... or do you also consider the amount of quarters spent on the arcade machines?

Seth: Capcom's official position would probably be something like "money is money, and we're happy about it either way." :)

That said, we usually only make money on the sale of the machines themselvses, since it's the arcade operators that get all those 100 yen coins. Capcom DOES own a fair number of arcades in Japan, so it gets a little blurry, but an arcade success without console success could still be a good thing.

SCEE did not approve the version submitted.

We've had to go back, fix a few things, spend a couple weeks testing the new build to verify fixes and make sure nothing else broke in the process... we didn't receive a final report until after we were launched in other territories plus the two week holiday at SCEE and our offices didn't help.

The game is back in submission with SCEE as we speak or will be in the next day or so. Fingers crossed and all of that but it is coming as soon as we can get it to you.

As for trophy support, no that's not required for us as we'd originally submitted in 2008. We're held to those standards on that title, so that will not be a gating factor.

And before people ask, we will always ensure that cross territory play is possible, inspite of the few fixes we've made to the SCEE version.

Alongside the release of the sticks, Mad Catz is releasing a branded collection of joypads.

These pads aspire to the old Sega Saturn or Sega Genesis style of pad that, as many of you will recall, boasted arguably the best layout and the best d-pad of any console controllers ever.

Mad Catz is well aware of how beloved the original design was but the company didn't stop at making a simple carbon copy.

Of course, the Time Attack and Survival modes are pretty self-explanatory (you earn extra time based on your performance in the Time Attack mode -- or, in the case of Survival mode, health).

But the Trial mode's pretty interesting -- it actually teaches you to play SF4 by making you complete specific combos for each character.

A challenge with Blanka asks you to jump in with a heavy kick, follow it up with a crouching medium kick and a light punch, and then finish it up with a heavy rolling attack. This mode's a great way for newcomers to learn how to play effectively.

Other cool features: the start and pause buttons have been moved from the top of the box to the front -- to avoid accidently hitting them while pulling off multi-button maneuvers. There's a storage area for the cord in the back. The top plate unscrews from the unit allowing modders to change out buttons and do those things that modders likes to do. Of course, that will render the warranty invalid, but that's the tinkerer's curse, right?

The Street Fighter stick is also designed to work with other fighting games -- a switch on the bottom of the box allows you to change the functionality of the joystick -- you can have it serve as a directional pad (a must for SFIV) or you can have it perform like a left-hand stick or right-hand stick on a regular game controller.