Capcom explains $40 SSFIV price, 'cautiously optimistic' about Tatsunoko sales
Capcom's VP of strategic planning and business development, Christian Svensson, officially confirmed the retailer-listed $40 price for the upcoming car vandalism sim, Super Street Fighter IV, in a recent interview with Gamasutra. Expanding on statements made when the game was first announced, Svensson said, "Going $10 above Platinum/Greatest Hits pricing was sort of a nice compromise ... It's $40 -- we had two choices, and the economics didn't work out on one ... no matter what, we were fracturing the userbase, and we had to start from scratch."
He went on to explain that the content was simply too much for a platinum version of the game, and that a new release would render cross-game play between SFIV and SSFIV impossible due to differing "title IDs." Svensson also teased that those who played SFIV on the system for which they purchase SSFIV will get access to "a nifty little special set of things that those people will have the option of enjoying that others won't."
Moving on to the subject of January's launch of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Svensson said, "We're a couple weeks in right now, and we've been doing re-orders. We're not at all dissatisfied with the sales at this point." As for long-term sales of the game, he added, "We are cautiously optimistic that it's going to have long legs ... the Versus series is well served by Tatsunoko as an outing. It really happens bring Versus back as a viable brand for Capcom." With any luck that means we'll see more ... interesting mashups from Capcom's Versus series in the coming years. Maybe Nintendo or Square? Whaddya say, folks?
