WHY??? I DO NOT understand!!!!!!

I pwn you with guns!

 

#1 reason right there. Our cultures are not the same.

Personally, I think that, for the most part, their approach to fighting games is different than ours.

 

I think its also worth mentioning that Sega makes a ass load of cash from VF over there. Obviously because of the player base but besides that, they charge money to play the game. Its an Arcade! We get online here in the US and its free to play. We don't pay Sega, we pay MS for the service, that does nothing for Sega. We also can jump in quest mode and earn tons of items for no extra cost. There was even downloadable items and a patch free of charge!

This is purely assumption but I believe Sega has an issue splitting profits with MS, which is the case when it comes to letting a game be online capable and throwing out patches, items, etc. Sega in JP is making money every time someone uses their cards over there. It may not be some huge number but its undoubtedly a significant amount of money and no question more then they get from people here in the US.

 

My feeling is that Sega is just not trying hard enough in the west. Nothing to do with Japan and Japanese people. Gamers are as much populars there as nerds are here, so not much really.

Sega is doing well in Japan with VF, competitions, star players, money prizes, everything is great. None of that in the west.

It seems to me Sega needs to change top managers if they want to become the new EA or something like they claimed.

 

Sega rent their VF5 machines to the arcades.

 

So does every body else right?

 

No, not really.

Namco for example, give you the option of buying or renting their Tekken 6 machines.

 

I didn't know that. Just another reason why Sega profits more in the East then here.

 

Choice (and culture) in America has a lot to do with it. The gaming consumer has so many more options today than when the fighting genre was initially introduced.

Games like, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Tetris always had more players than fighting games. Today its the FPS,FPS online (Halo, COD4, Metal Gear, Gears,of war,etc) Guitar Hero, Grand Theft Auto, and WII type games, that have more players. This is simply because these games are easier to play and for a great many Americans easier-to-play translates into more fun! Its simply easier to point and shoot, or press X to start the play and control the runner with the analog stick to reach the end-zone, than it is to learn 50,75,125 etc moves in a fighting game.

I do experiments with Tekken, SC and VF all the time with noobs at my place. I'll put in Tekken or SC play around or so, then put in VF and play a round or so and everybody always wants to go back to Tekken or SC. That's because button mashing, (in this case hitting the buttons without knowing anything about the game[/size]) gets the new comer more successful results that it does in VF. I see it over and over again.

So if you start out with 100% of people who would play some kind of game in America a large chunk of that will be sucked up by easy to play games, FPS, Guitar Hero, WII fit, RPGs, etc. Another big chunk is sucked up by sporting & racing games, Madden, NCAA, GRID, Need for Speed,etc. Once you subtract
all of these out, potential candidates for the fighting genre are
left. Then these games can be ranked from by the button-mash-to-performance ratio.

VF is down there at the bottom with all the other games that require considerable skill to really be successful in its gaming community.

I can't speak on the Japanese scene, but my personal experience with the American scene and the many connotations of the word 'game' at least entitles me to an opinion.

Games of Luck
Games of Chance
Games of Skill
Fun Games
Educational Games,etc.

Checkers vs. Chess
Gundam vs. Armored Core
Need4Speed vs. Gran Turismo
Str fighter vs. Virtua Fighter

in America, the easier the game the more players you'll have. As the skill level required or complexity of the game increases the less people in America will consider it fun.

I actually think the number of gamers in the fighting genre (in America) has increased every year since 1991 (street fighter released). But the number of gamers that play easier games has increased even faster along with the choice of games that are easier to play: Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Super Mario, Final Fantasy, Guitar Hero, Madden, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, WII fit etc.

As new, different types of easier games come out, the smaller the percentage of fighting games purchased will be. All though the number of actual people playing[/size] fighting games will continue to increase the percentage of people playing fighting games will decrease, until FPS have reached their saturation point, at which time the percentage of fighting games purchased [/size]will begin to slowly creep up.

 

You think you have it bad?

There are 3 VF5 players in Scotland. Including myself.

 

You've gotta be saying that there are only 3 VF5 players that you
know of in Scotland. You don't really mean that in all of Scotland
there are only 3 VF5 players? I always assumed Scotland was a
pretty progressive place. But if you're saying there are only 3 VF5 players in all of Scotland, then I might have to reconsider /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/sick.gif

 

Obviously I have sen people play it at random gatherings and such but I would consider a real player someone who actually tries to get better.

In that sense, there are three of us.

If there are any others they are doing a damn good job hiding.

 

Anyone that is trying to compare fighting games with other genres is being unfair. It is impossible to compare Virtua Fighter or any fighting game with other genres. Fighting games offer something for one group of people, while other genres (like FPSs)offer something for another group of people. I happen to like both fighting games and shooting games. The real truth is that I like games that are competitive (fighting, shooting, sports, etc.) because they are easier to understand to me. The sad truth is that not every game is meant to be played competitively like most RPGs and the Campaign modes of shooting games like Halo (Bioshock actually has no multiplayer to speak of).

When it comes to comparing fighters with other fighters, you can't compare VF with every fighter. VF is a 3D hand-to-hand fighter; Soul Calibur is a 3D weapon-based fighter; Street Fighter is a 2D hand-to-hand fighter; Super Smash Bros. is a new class of fighters. All of these are games I actually happen to like. The only games you can truly compare VF with are Tekken and DOA. DOA seems to be more of a game for people who want sex (which is silly considering the fact that you can just watch real porn or get a girlfriend, a real girlfriend for sex) than an actual game; Tekken, on the other hand, is a great game but T5R does not seem to feel evolved compared to VF5 (I am actually excited for T6 because of some of the new gameplay elements such as rage mode).

My opinion is that if people can accept the fact that different people are into different things, then I really believe that all of these genres can coexist with each other. There just needs to be enough people praising each individual genre and those same people also have to praise them properly.

 

I'm guessing you haven't played DOA3.1 or 3.2, right?

 

I thought only 3 copies of VF5 were sold in Scotland. I felt like spinning in a skirt in disgust. Now I'm not sure how Groundskeeper Willie is going to play Space Invaders now. And I was trying to talk about culture of guns and fighting, not the games of it, as it might have been, earlier.

 

Or had a girlfriend,judging by the way you clarified what she was for.

The truth is you can compare every fighting game to one another, they are all striving to achieve the same goal, sure they may look different but core aspects remain the same.

Does it really matter that the characters in SC use weapons and the characters in VF do not?

Hell no, it's the same people that play the games and the aesthetic of a weapon doesn't make it any less of a fighting game.

 

Yes, I do agree that the general objective of each fighter is all the same (to beat your opponent with your chosen character) but you have to admit that some are played differently than others. You wouldn't play VF5 the same way as SC because the combat is different (there are weapons in VF as well, but they are only there as fashion items for certain characters), even though they do share the common element of different stage types (open, closed, and hybrids). Wouldn't you agree?

 

As some of you might have mentioned it was just bad marketing in general over the years.That and with the arcade scene being on life support in the US,while it's still relatively healthy in Japan.

The other thing is its presentation.Gamers in the US are very use to having outrageous personalities,being masher friendly,cutscenes, and endings in it's fighting games.VF has always been missing that in and to the ignorant makes it "less of a fighter" than say Dead or Alive,Tekken or Soul Calibur.Its not surprising that this hurts the overall amount of VF players.Thats the sad reality we live in. =(

 

SEGA needs better distribution for their game. In the Philippines there are barely any VF machines in most arcades...surprisingly, though, Tekken 6 machines are everywhere here, and the developers at Namco even visited our country for a tournament a year ago. [In fact, this year they're holding a new tournament for Tekken 6. Talk about good Namco support....I can't say the same for Sega.]

Maybe Sega's rivals in the arcade industry are just better funded? Lately I haven't been seeing a lot of their games in the local arcades...most of the Sega games that are there are the older titles like Daytona 1, etc. Of course, this perspective is for my country only; I'm not sure about the situation elsewhere....but perhaps the lack of presence for VF outside of Japan explains why sales for the game haven't taken off in countries outside of Japan. Based on VGChartz figures, the latest VF hasn't really sold too well for either the PS3 or the Xbox 360.

 

You are essentialy saying that people cannot compare any shooting game to one another because there are different guns in each game.

We cannot compare driving games to each other because there are different cars.

We cannot compare RPG games to each other because there are different options characters can have.

Just because I play a game in accordance with it's gameplay mechanics doesn't magically make the game incomparable to any other game within the same genre.