Street Fighter 5, the golden child in the fighting game community, is losing the fight in dominating the world of gaming.
Having had lower than expected profits at release, things were looking bleak for the game’s creator, Capcom. Having a goal of 2 million copies sold by March 31, many were shocked that that game was hardly making any progress towards that number. Hope was found at the end of a three month long stretch as it finally passed the million sales mark which rejuvenated hope in the fighting game scene. Numbers were revealed and it was shown that Capcom had sold 1.4 million copies of the beloved fighting game by May 8th 2016. That success has now quickly come to a full stop as the latest report shows Street Fighter 5 sales numbers are still 1.4 million meaning that it hasn’t sold more than 100,000 units since the last time numbers were revealed.
Many consumers were disappointed in the games lack of content at release. It was argued that Capcom had released an unfinished product. In the past Capcom has done some questionable practices such as on-disc DLC. With that method Capcom had completed content that was barred off from gamers until they saw fit to sell as extra downloadable content. Many would have thought Capcom would have learned their lessons from past blunders but instead they saw fit to use stealthier tactics instead. Having publicly announced new downloadable content via a live panel at Evolution 2016 tournament, gamers cheered not knowing that everything announced would need to be purchased separately. Regularly this wouldn’t be an issue as games often do this but Capcom had players pay for a Season Pass that would guarantee them access to the extra content released throughout the game’s first season. As a reconciliation Capcom did iterate that it would use a percentage of the proceeds as funds for future Capcom tournaments.
