Reading between the lines; Street Fighter V to arrive on next-gen consoles
Interesting report on EventHubs.com on a few things FGC-related (including whether UMvC3's fighting engine might be re-used in future titles). While I know there's a group of players who love them some UMvC3, I never really liked the engine (too frantic), but it's the next potential Street Fighter news I was eager to read about (if any).
Amongst what Christian Svennson said I found this the most interesting:
We have a current gen that is losing some steam at retail (retail software revenues down approximately 27% year to date) and our more recent fighting efforts did not fare as well as I would have liked, contributing to that downward turn. We have a looming next generation of hardware coming.
... And as you know, it takes literally years (multiple) to make a game. It's going to be a little while until we're ready to talk about what's next.
From the sounds of that I'd bet on a big Capcom fighting game to feature in the launch windows of Microsoft and Sony's next-gen consoles. The development time frame would fit in order to coincide with console updates towards the end of 2013. According to fan logic, the next big fighting games we're likely to see are new Darkstalkers or Street Fighter releases (I don't think Capcom would want to saturate the delicately-balanced market with a new Capcom vs. SNK right now). Darkstalkers would probably make more sense on current-gen hardware as I doubt Capcom would want to leave it another year or so before launching another fighting game and the projected numbers from sales from a Darkstalkers are likely to be good, but not exactly mind-blowing.
That leaves me thinking Street Fighter V will appear on the next generation of home consoles. Street Fighter is Capcom's biggest fighting game. Capcom did well out of SSFIV launching at the same time of the Nintendo 3DS console. I'm guessing Capcom realises sales of the troubled Street Fighter x Tekken might've been a lot healthier on PSVita than they likely will be had it featured in the launch window of Sony's troubled handheld console.
Street Fighter V on a new Xbox or PS4 could be amazing. While I'm not the biggest fan of the 2.5D graphics in Street Fighter IV I think Capcom did an amazing job otherwise. I don't think they'd want to undermine their premier fighting game franchise by releasing another update to SFIV and then spend a lot of time and resources trying to hype up the FGC with news of a new Street Fighter V months later on a new console.
Capcom have made mistakes recently but in a way I'm glad they made them now *after* the release of the amazing Street Fighter IV and not while attempting to revive that franchise. Hopefully Street Fighter V will take full advantage of the power of a new console, offer enhanced online modes and ways to share in the excitement of the game (before, during and after the console has been turned on) and in launching during a new hardware window take advantage of plenty of gamers eager to buy (any) titles which test out their new hardware purchases. Capcom will know it's a great way to attract new punters into a world they might not have bought into otherwise and then hopefully keep them there.