Article: The United States of Street Fighter IV

Here is another take on what is going on with SFIV right now by Jared Rea and for those interested he also has some pictures of what some operators are doing with their kits, which in several cases means taking whatever they have on hand to get the game running without the Vewlix cabinet, even if that means using a 2-player control base that is connected to two HDTVs or even worse just anything they can throw it into (the image above is photoshopped, I should have noticed that before).

You can’t blame them though as SFIV is undoubtedly huge right now but because it commands a very high (let me say, outrageous) price that most operators just can’t afford it creates a difficult situation for us. Had Capcom not dropped the ball on the hardware and made it so that the game requires 1 kit or cabinet per player the situation would be different and more operators could capitalize on the hype that this game is bringing to arcades at the moment – a level of hype that we haven’t seen in a very long time.

One point that Jared makes that I agree with is that SFIV proves to everyone something about arcades that I think a lot of people have a hard time accepting for some reason – that great games that are properly marketed will bring out the masses. I’ve said it before – arcade makers need to take note that SFIV has been marketed like a console game and not like a typical arcade game and look at the difference in the results.

But that’s my rambling, if you want to check out Jared’s article, click here.