Soul Calibur 6 Discussion

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I hope Cassandra makes it in. I never played the older games except SC2 recently, but I love Sophie's aesthetic, style and, to be perfectly candid, her body shape, but I don't find honorable hero characters super appealing. I wasn't a fan of timid Pyrrha either. So I think I'll love Cassie's energy more.

I plan on playing a lot of Tira and Mitsu, and I hope Raphael is a stronger character overall this time around, if he's in at all.
 
Macaulyn said:
And how exactly does an arcade release help in anything at all? Any well tested game will be released in a very good state when it comes to bugs, and it can still be patched to deal with whatever minor ones it had left, specially because it will always need patches to update balance and even add new content, so its not like there is an additional cost to that. Using arcades as some sort of test phase is something only stupid companies do, there is no advantage in it. Its like @JohnMcKee said, some people shouldn't have access to social media.
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I'd be happy to explain that. It basically comes down to the different financial incentives.

If Namco releases a buggy fighting game, people won’t keep putting money into the machine and it loses money for arcade owners. Arcade owners report what machines are successful (or not) and pay attention to what’s profitable. Hence, they’re encouraged to released a polished product because doing so makes them more money. And in the event that they have to patch an arcade game, they have to bear the cost themselves.

In the modern console space, the same incentives aren’t there. Most games make the majority of their sales in the first week or so. If the game ends up being broken at high-level play, they’ve already made all their money. It might cost them some DLC sales, but Season Passes have lessened that danger as well. All a company has to do is release a game that is good enough to get good initial reviews (which every SoulCalibur game has) and make its money. Additionally, both PSN and Xbox Live bear some of the financial cost of distributing a patch, so lots of companies nowadays figure “Whatever, we can fix our game later.” Eventually, however, a Japanese man is going to run the numbers (i.e. how much it costs to develop a patch vs. how many sales will be lost by leaving the game broken) and that will be that.

Yes, of course Bamco can just bug test the game themselves, and I think they did a good job with SCV. But that’s still money that comes out of the game’s budget. Why should they pay people to look for broken/exploitable stuff when, in arcades, players are willing to pay to do the same thing? The general player base will eventually find the stuff anyway, but money works as a powerful incentive. When losing also means you’ve lost 100 yen, you better believe fans are going to be working overtime to push their characters to the limit.

I’m puzzled by your comment that “smart companies” wouldn’t do this. You’ll note that I did admit that SoulCalibur most likely isn’t popular enough to make an arcade release profitable. But, in my opinion, the three Souls games that debuted in arcades eventually got console ports featuring polished gameplay and lots of single-player content. The three that launched on consoles were deficient in one or both of these categories. But I am an optimist and hope SoulCalibur VI is the first to buck this trend.
 
Rex Dart said:
I'd be happy to explain that. It basically comes down to the different financial incentives.

If Namco releases a buggy fighting game, people won’t keep putting money into the machine and it loses money for arcade owners. Arcade owners report what machines are successful (or not) and pay attention to what’s profitable. Hence, they’re encouraged to released a polished product because doing so makes them more money. And in the event that they have to patch an arcade game, they have to bear the cost themselves.

In the modern console space, the same incentives aren’t there. Most games make the majority of their sales in the first week or so. If the game ends up being broken at high-level play, they’ve already made all their money. It might cost them some DLC sales, but Season Passes have lessened that danger as well. All a company has to do is release a game that is good enough to get good initial reviews (which every SoulCalibur game has) and make its money. Additionally, both PSN and Xbox Live bear some of the financial cost of distributing a patch, so lots of companies nowadays figure “Whatever, we can fix our game later.” Eventually, however, a Japanese man is going to run the numbers (i.e. how much it costs to develop a patch vs. how many sales will be lost by leaving the game broken) and that will be that.

Yes, of course Bamco can just bug test the game themselves, and I think they did a good job with SCV. But that’s still money that comes out of the game’s budget. Why should they pay people to look for broken/exploitable stuff when, in arcades, players are willing to pay to do the same thing? The general player base will eventually find the stuff anyway, but money works as a powerful incentive. When losing also means you’ve lost 100 yen, you better believe fans are going to be working overtime to push their characters to the limit.

I’m puzzled by your comment that “smart companies” wouldn’t do this. You’ll note that I did admit that SoulCalibur most likely isn’t popular enough to make an arcade release profitable. But, in my opinion, the three Souls games that debuted in arcades eventually got console ports featuring polished gameplay and lots of single-player content. The three that launched on consoles were deficient in one or both of these categories. But I am an optimist and hope SoulCalibur VI is the first to buck this trend.
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Every single thing you said is made much simpler and cheaper on a direct console release. You have an incredibly distorted vision of what is or not profitable.
 
Rex Dart said:
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As much as it pains me to say, making an arcade release for SCVI wouldn't be a smart idea. The series has always been more popular in the US and Europe than in Japan, so it makes little sense to have arcade tests for the game when the most popular markets for said game have a defunct arcade scene. While I'd personally love an arcade release, it would be way more profitable to keep releasing them on consoles only like they've done with the past 3 games.
 
Rex Dart said:
Yes, of course Bamco can just bug test the game themselves, and I think they did a good job with SCV. But that’s still money that comes out of the game’s budget. Why should they pay people to look for broken/exploitable stuff when, in arcades, players are willing to pay to do the same thing? The general player base will eventually find the stuff anyway, but money works as a powerful incentive. When losing also means you’ve lost 100 yen, you better believe fans are going to be working overtime to push their characters to the limit.

I’m puzzled by your comment that “smart companies” wouldn’t do this. You’ll note that I did admit that SoulCalibur most likely isn’t popular enough to make an arcade release profitable. But, in my opinion, the three Souls games that debuted in arcades eventually got console ports featuring polished gameplay and lots of single-player content. The three that launched on consoles were deficient in one or both of these categories. But I am an optimist and hope SoulCalibur VI is the first to buck this trend.
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The odd part of this is Namco decided this was more cost effective after SC2 for whatever reason. SC's been in the console division's hands ever since. They're not going to toss it over to the arcade division now just because of a few internet people saying Tekken's model is superior.

Realistically if the arcade division handling it was actually more cost effective, why was it tossed to the console division? SC3AE still had rebalancing and testing PRIOR to release in the arcades so the notion that they send it out sans testers for the arcades is ludicrous.
 
Marginal said:
The odd part of this is Namco decided this was more cost effective after SC2 for whatever reason. SC's been in the console division's hands ever since. They're not going to toss it over to the arcade division now just because of a few internet people saying Tekken's model is superior.

Realistically if the arcade division handling it was actually more cost effective, why was it tossed to the console division? SC3AE still had rebalancing and testing PRIOR to release in the arcades so the notion that they send it out sans testers for the arcades is ludicrous.
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I have no real worth in saying this, but I personally believe it's because Soulcalibur isn't as big as a priority for Namco than Tekken. Having a game be released on console only means that you can just release the game and get your profits immediately as opposed to the constant upkeep of arcade machines and yearly revisions. You can just put the game out, maybe patch out some of the more egregious broken shit and you're pretty much done. Given what I've read about Project Soul repeatedly getting disbanded to work on Tekken games, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the reason Soulcalibur games are console exclusive is to funnel more money into Tekken's expensive arcade cycle.

I believe the other reason can be found in this very thread. Like it or not, Soulcalibur is mainly a casual fighting series game. SC3 was so unbalanced that it (combined with a very late, very limited release of SC3:AE during the final death throes of the US arcade market) killed the US tournament scene. SCIV had the Doom Combo, SCV has Viola, and SCII HD is a shitty port job. It also doesn't help that the games to address these problems (SC3:AE, SC:DB, and LS) were not updated version of the main games, but weird (and suspiciously inexpensive) side-projects. There are more people here that would rather have the game come out the gate sooner than better, and I can't blame them, but money talks. And the money cares more about the shiny extras than the game itself.
 
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