Has the success of SF4 and MVC3 made it better or worse for other games? This question is also towards the other Capcom games such as ST and VSAV.
Has Capcom helped the genre? Or just helped itself and damaged everyone else in the process?
Personally I think that leap of having 10X popularity is something the rest of the genre could not handle, but it still changed everyone’s expectations accordingly, towards a non-realistic level. So at this point the true value of everything else, when overshadowed by the big 2 games, looks diminished.
So now it’s harder to get events for other games going and get noticed. Now no one will give a shit about you if you can’t bring 10X bigger numbers than 3 years ago. (An unrealistic request for most of the scenes.)
It may be similar to the years when Smash (Melee) was the most popular game in the US by far. Did Smash’s competitive success really help in the long run? (I really don’t see how.)
Have Smash players become permanent, active members of the community? (An extremely small % compared to the people who went as they came.)
I have heard people in the SRK staff talking about SF4,MVC3 etc. as “gateway” games to the genre, in that they’ll lure new people in and the new people will eventually stay for the main course which are the more hardcore, niche games.
My question is- So far, does this seem to get the result you hoped for or does it not?