This has been getting to me, that regardless of the quality of design and development of at least the primary version these days, we have to deal with some of the absolute worst publishing companies in the business this side of Activision and Microsoft Game Studios. It’s kind of bad in Japan, and it’s much worse in America.
Capcom - They’re generally one of the more soulless corporate game companies out there in general these days, trying (or at least claiming to force console sales) to skip out on an arcade version of Super, relying completely on blatant and often unsuccessful market pandering and cheesy DLC like costumes, and steadfastly refusing to patch anything but the bare minimum on their XBLA releases. Then take a look at the North American release for SSFIV, where we got terrible boxart, and were completely gypped out of any of the extras available with the Japanese release like the combo DVD or the anime.
Arc System Works - bad DLC everywhere. Not even talking about the CS characters, but the colour palettes, announcer voices, the Raven unlock in GG2, etc.
Aksys - Once again, BBCS has none of the LE content available in both Japan and Europe, 4 page black and white manual, crappy, poorly checked localization, they don’t even know about the region restrictions of their version, and they can’t distribute to save their ass, particularly leaving much of Canada practically a BlazBlue-free zone with communities running 5 or 6 players for 1 copy 9 days out from release. Oh, and this horror.
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Sega - lol Sega
Namco Bandai - well, they’re Bandai, so duh. I don’t think SCIV even needs to be touched on, but the Tekken 6 console version was two things: late and half-assed. Crappy graphics, crappy menus, crappy loading times, crappy training mode, crappy offline implementation, super crappy netcode at launch, mediocre netcode after patch, and overall a clear indication they didn’t give a damn with as much money as the arcade version is raking in.
SNK Playmore - KoF98UM XBLA. 'Nuff said.
It really does nothing for the genre when you’re practically required to take it up the ass just to play it. It’s particularly disconcerting when you consider that around a decade or so ago, most of these could have been considered some of the most dedicated, fan serving companies out there (a couple still are but are just horrendously incompetent, to be fair). Some of the console ports sucked, but the consoles generally weren’t up to it at the time.
The SSFIV release was just barely competent enough for the series to carry it, but beyond that if fighting games are really supposed to be popular in America again, some damned improvement is needed. Most new games are being left to die if or when they get over here.