Capcom licence GGPO for use in future Capcom games.

ProfJamesJoynt

[08] Mercenary
If you don't know what GGPO is, it's a netcode library for arcade-style games such as fighters that uses special latency-hiding techniques to give an illusion of lag-free play, even during cross-continental matches. If you thought fighting games just couldn't be done right online, think again. Now that Capcom have licenced this technology, we'll be having great quality online matches in SFIV, possibily Tatsunoko vs Capcom, and SFHD (even though they're technically not using GGPO). If it's true that BlazBlue is also using GGPO, there's even hope for non-Capcom games using it. GGPO for SCV anyone?

Article.
GGPO itself.
 
This is solid fare. I've played on GGPO and the latency is nearly nil.

Would it work for a game that runs as smooth as this or Tekken, though?
 
Great, great news.

Let me give you an example of the potential here: I just started playing Super Turbo in February of this year, and in 6 months' time I placed top 16 at Evo. Outside of traveling to tournaments, my experience came from online play via GGPO and 2DF (a similar service which is almost as good and has far more games). And this is a game dominated by people who've been playing since the early 90s!

Once you've tried something like this, you'll never want to play a fighter on Xbox Live again. With Capcom and Arc/Aksys using this technology, hopefully Namco & Sega will be pushed to follow suit!

EDIT: Tony Cannon (the creator of GGPO) has said that if anything it should work BETTER on a console, since the code can be tailored to each specific game rather than to an emulator that runs lots of different games. Or something like that. So I would have no worries about applying this to 3-D games.

DOUBLE EDIT: Since the article doesn't make this 100% clear, HD Remix will NOT use GGPO, but Backbone is attempting to replicate it. From Tony's comments, it will likely be 2DF-quality, which is still great.

-Josh
 
Josh, you did most of your learning on GGPO and placed top 16 at Evo? That's incredible! Congrats buddy!

I've been itching to go back and play some more Alpha 2 on GGPO...
 
I didn't see anything about Capcom having exclusive rights to the GGPO code, so theoretically Namco could acquire the rights to use it. However Namco hasn't seemed as interested in the fan involvement for their fighters as Capcom has demonstrated with STHD and such, so......
 
Josh, you did most of your learning on GGPO and placed top 16 at Evo? That's incredible! Congrats buddy!

Thanks! To be fair, I did get one of the easier pools and I play a top-tier character (Balrog). Still not on the level of the West Coast old-schoolers, but I don't get completely embarrassed by them now.

But my point in this wasn't to toot my own horn. Rather, it was to demonstrate that higher-quality online play will reduce the regional barriers to fighting games. ST was always one of my favorite games, but I couldn't get competitive with it because I live in Ohio, which was more of a Guilty Gear & Virtua Fighter area. But when netcode this good becomes available, and top players begin to play on it, that becomes far less important.

I've been itching to go back and play some more Alpha 2 on GGPO...

A fine choice! Would gladly take it over A3 or 3rd Strike any day. =)
 
I was playing SFA2 on GGPO until SC4 came out so this is great news. I was worried that Capcom wouldn't do anything to address the lag problems that they were having in the home ports of SF4, so to hear that they have licensed their netcode means that I will definitely pick this up unless they don't put in the time to get the PS3 version right. I love playing SF4 in the arcade but it's too expensive.

And maybe Namco will follow suit but I doubt it.
 
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