So why did SFV / Street Fighter x Tekken / MVC Infinite bomb? Surely the names are big enough to sell more than they did đź‘€
Despite all of SFV's bad word of mouth and disappointing sales at launch, it has still sold over 3.7 million copies. It's no SF4 but it's a failure in terms of expectations, not normal metrics.
SFxT came out as the new wave of fighting game fatigue had begun to set in. Multiple versions of SF4 had already been released by that point, and the people in the general public who had wanted a fighting game had already bought SF4 and were happy with it/forgotten about it already. The competitive scene hated it for various reasons, but the general public simply didn't care about it. It didn't help that it had the same character models/style as SF4, so didn't differentiate itself visually either. Despite all this, even then it still got at least 1.7 million in sales. You imply SFxT is low quality, but 1.7 million isn't nothing. If anything this proves my point. Brand is what gave that game as many sales as it got, especially in a market that wasn't nearly as receptive anymore.
MvCI was hideous. Casuals who might have been interested were driven away almost immediately by the graphics/first impressions. Ironically it's a pretty good fighting game -- its aesthetics are actually the main thing wrong with it. It even has respectable netcode, which is the point of this thread.
Basically, fighting game fatigue (casuals don't buy that many except for the few mainline ones, and they only do it once in a while)/graphics doomed MvCI and SFxT. Casual sales are based on really shallow things -- how good of a fighting game it is doesn't always have anything to do with it. Quality and word of mouth have an effect, but it can't always compete with raw brand power, especially among consumers who don't research games or keep up to date with game news/reviews.
To put things in perspective, UMvC3 is liked by a lot of people both in and out of the fgc -- and still sold less than MK vs DCU. So unless you're going to tell me MK vs DCU is a higher quality product than MvC3 that's a pretty good indicator of brand power right there. Mortal Kombat + Batman/Superman was enough to outperform a game that was technically better in every way. A game that is literally broken mechanically outperformed much better fighting games in sales because people know MK and people know Batman/Superman. If sales were all about quality this wouldn't be possible.
When a non-enthusiast walks into a store looking for a 3d fighter, he'll either get Tekken or Soul Calibur. When they want a 2d fighter, they'll buy SF or MK. Other titles are simply not on peoples' radars, regardless of how good they may be. These are simply the games most people are aware of, and a lot of people don't stray far from what they know. Even if they learn about other games, it's highly unlikely they'll give them a try.
MK11 is a wonderful game. It has a lot of wonderful things in it. I bet a ton of people who bought it didn't know or care about any of that. They just knew MK is the series with the yellow ninja guy and there's a lot of blood, and that's SICKKKK.
