PlayStation Vita Street Fighter x Tekken Due in Fall with 12 New Characters

Not Happy About Street Fighter X Tekken's On-Disc DLC? Give Capcom A Call

It's probably safe to say that most core fighting game enthusiasts know about Capcom's shenanigan to milk core fighting fans with the on-disc DLC. The company's official response is that they packed full characters and content onto the disc to spare consumers precious hard drive space and to make the game compatible. It doesn't explain why the characters aren't accessible for PS3 and Xbox 360 gamers or why they are accessible for the PS Vita, however, other companies have managed to make games with DLC compatible for online play without hassling or gimping gamers of their retail purchase, such as Arc Systems, Bungie, SNK, id Software, and to a lesser extent, NetherRealm Studios.

What's worse is that Capcom's response has been to pull videos from YouTube showing gamers what's already contained on their $60 disc and justifying why the PS Vita will have access to all these characters as day-one purchase as part of the full game, for free, but console gamers will have to pay extra for these characters already stored on the disc. As you can imagine, this kind of tactic only sped up the process of having the Xbox 360 version of Street Fighter X Tekken pirated across torrents a lot sooner than usual.

Now Capcom is no indie company. They've been around for ages and it's not like this is some new fancy tactic...it's a growing trend in today's video game industry that has become a financial honey pot for most AAA publishing studios. And while budget costs and production expenses must be accounted for, there's no reason to gouge consumers and loyal fans. CD Projekt, Bethesda and Rockstar have managed just fine without resorting to such tactics and it's saddening when a company like Capcom tries to squeeze gamers for every nickel and dime that they're worth. Heck, CD Projekt even wanted to give away free DLC but Microsoft wouldn't let them.

Nevertheless, if you find the practice of on-disc, disc-locked content fine and a completely tolerable means of information packaging, then by all means purchase Street Fighter X Tekken and then buy whatever characters, clothes, colors and preset combos that suit your taste when the option becomes available this fall. Don't be surprised though when the next game comes around that you'll need to pay $60 for the single-player, $10 for multiplayer, and $5 for every other character on the game disc.

If, however, you'd like to preserve what little integrity the gaming industry has left, you might want to contact Capcom while the event is still fresh in their minds. You might also want to inform your friends or anyone else you know who is planning on buying the game to at least inform them of this trend. As the old saying goes, an informed consumer is an empowered consumer.

It's one thing to charge $60 as an entry price for a retail game, we're all fine with that, but storing fully usable content on the disc -- approximately a third of the total content -- and then having gamers to use microtransactions to further unlock it is just deplorable. We expect large amounts of microtransaction content from free-to-play titles but not as disc-locked content on full-priced retail games. Furthermore, Namco showed us with Tekken 6, and SNK showed us with King of Fighers XIII, you don't need to nickel and dime your consumers to deliver a long lasting, replayable product.

But don't squabble amongst yourselves, take that heat to where it needs to burn the most...the doorstep of Capcom. Write them, phone them, e-mail them if you want, just be sure to let them know that this is the kind of business practice you won't tolerate.

Capcom U.S.A., Inc.
800 Concar Drive
Suite 300
San Mateo, CA 94402-2649
(650) 350-6500
www.capcom.com