Street Fighter is an iconic fighting series which has a thriving competitive scene. It’s probably one of Capcom’s most successful exports and key to the company’s future success. Unfortunately, Street Fighter V’s shambolic launch, which for some bizarre reason didn’t include the story mode, hasn’t helped matters. Not only that, the game lacked key features and didn’t seem finished. According to the company’s latest financial results, Street Fighter V has the same sales figures of 1.4 million compared with the period in February. This means the shipped units between May and September 30th is less than 100,000.
This is a really terrible showing considering the strong intellectual property, wide range of competitive eSports events and the number of people who enjoyed Street Fighter IV on numerous platforms. Hopefully, the situation can improve as the game becomes discounted and people take a punt at the lower price. Evidently, the awful launch really impacted on the game’s reputation and this will be difficult to turn around. Street Fighter V is a pretty decent game now, although I prefer the previous offering. Whether or not Capcom will be able to invest in expensive AAA titles for the long-term remains to be seen, but I hope core Street Fighter games will remain part of their line-up.
