Official tournament event tours hampering the day one quality of the product - Part 1.

Quality day one releases were quite the norm for a long time and still is today to a slightly lesser extent but that usually depends on the game's genre and long-term support. 

Big franchises also have big events to help promote the game in the longer run.

But not everything can go to plan.

In this series I will cover two games that had lacklustre day one releases thanks to other big marketing shenanigans that made it "easier said than done" to delay the main game 

The first one is a juggernaut entry that from 2016 perspective.... what could possibly go wrong after the amazing Street Fighter IV series?

Capcom Pro Tour x Street Fighter V

Street Fighter is Capcom's flagship 1V1 franchise which caused a global phenomenon in 1991 thanks to Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.

Part way through early 2010 when Street Fighter IV era was its main game, Capcom introduced a pro tour series known as the Capcom Pro Tour, a series of official tournaments where the highest ranked players (+1 from last chance qualifier) gets a chance to win a whopping six figure cash prize.  The Capcom Cup finals before the pandemic era were held around mid-December, a few weeks before the end of the year, Capcom Cup in December 2015 was the last BIG tournament to focus on Ultra Street Fighter IV and interests after that event were shifted to its sequel that was coming out a few months later.

The problem:
The start of a new tour series happens in March and the new Street Fighter V game came out in February 2016 so practically a month to practice., the impressions of the day one build was clearly underwhelming in content as it lacked both:

a Story mode and even the obligatory Arcade mode which nearly every good to average fighting game has.

Pre-release trailers clearly focused on the esport player base thanks to the real-life tournament footage used in the trailers, but not everyone plays "For Glory" as a fair number of players play games "For Fun". Survival mode, the only true single player mode at the time was tedious in higher difficulties thanks to cheating psychic A.I being able counter react to the player's input and the early days there were no in-game items to use in order to turn the tables, so you only had one life. This was the only way to unlock extra colours so... good luck getting the harder colours with an hard to win character. 

Did you know that Extreme difficulty used to be called Hell difficulty? That name change happened around the first DLC release featuring Street Fighter 3's Alex.

Before Extreme there was Hell.

The reason:
Giving the game one month of playtime was enough for pro players to get familiar with their mains and having a 9 month pro tour season allows more countries to host their Capcom Pro Tour Tournaments, if it lasted for 6 months (say starting in June) then fewer countries would have been able to host it as some locations may have their venues occupied by other events not related to Street Fighter.

The anti-influence:
Tekken 7 was out for arcades in February 2015 and had a few delays before its console launch in June 2017, they took notes at Street Fighter V's disappointing start to avoid the same mistakes, fortunately for Bandai Namco, Tekken didn't have an official pro tour until a few years after launch, so its day one build was downright superior to Street Fighter V's launch edition thanks to having actual content for any type of player to enjoy and as of 2022 it's currently one of the most popular entries of the franchise thanks to long term DLC support and a very strong tournament showcase, even for spectators who've never played Tekken can appreciate the now iconic slow-mo moments when both players land their final blows at a (potentially) game ending round.

Ken Masters, another factor for SFV's plague thanks to his banana hair design.

In 2022, the upcoming Street Fighter VI had a much stronger beta testing reception thanks to many quality-of-life features to training, "bad online connection" mercy quits, accessibility to different control styles, a proper single player mode, gimmicky gameplay modes that were very reminiscent to 90s fighting games in a era when pro tournaments were an extra instead of a priority.

Capcom Cup 2022-2023 season aka the last BIG Street Fighter V tournament will end on February so Street Fighter VI make its debut spotlight a few weeks/months later.  Knowing that Capcom Cup finals can start a few weeks after the new year and not before during pre-pandemic days, Street Fighter VI could be out in April time so that it has one month of exposure for players to experiment before the first Capcom Pro Tour in May which will take 9 months to reach to the end of the 2023-2024 Season... February 2024, the question is... will all of the content teased in past trailers be available on day one?

Next time... will be covering a series where they tend to release new games in a pair because why not.