No Ultra, No Turbo: Street Fighter V Is The Only SFV
About damn right
For years, Capcom have iterated upon each major Street Fighter game with Turbo, Ultra, Championship, and Goodness Knows What Other Editions, tweaking the balance and adding new characters and stages. That's all good and well when you need to physically release new cartridges, but that hasn't been the case for years. So, finally, they're sticking with one game. Street Fighter V [official site] will be it - no Ultra, no Turbo.
All "balance and system adjustments" will come free. A steady flow of new content like characters is planned, for players to buy either with a virtuacash earned by playing or real money. Speaking of characters, Capcom announced a new one too, that guy with the locks.
Capcom announced all this at the EVO fighting game championships over the weekend. Explaining the change in a blog post, Capcom reflect on what happened with Street Fighter IV, Super SF4, and Ultra SF4:
"While these one-time updates did revive interest in the series every few years, it was difficult to keep players engaged for long periods of time unless they were competitive. This also punished players who took a break from playing the game, because if they wanted to start again in a few years, they would be forced to purchase an upgrade to join the existing player pool who had already moved on to a new version. On top of that, this old method also forced players to purchase all of the new content, even if only a few characters may have appealed to them."
Yep, that sounds garbage all right. So they're changing it. Capcom plan to update balance and tweak systems for free and release new content "on a regular basis", all on the same base game. No fragmenting the playerbase, and no having to buy essentially the same game all over again. It'll be smiles all round - if the content updates are handled well.
Capcom plan to let folks unlock the new bits of content with either a 'Fight Money' currency earned simply by playing, or the 'Zenny' microtransaction cash that'll cost real money. Hmm. I realise they're trying to come up with a way to not entirely lose out on the extra cash from selling new versions, but this could be a mighty nuisance if they're try to charge silly amounts of Fight Money to push folks into whipping out their credit card.
Anyway! That chap with the hair! His name is Necalli. Capcom say, "Players who enjoy a straight forward, hard hitting character will feel right at home with Necalli, as he possesses a wide variety of savage, close range attacks, as well as a command grab, all with the goal of demolishing his foes." Have a look at him in action:
So anyway, how about that EVO this weekend, eh?