Capcom explains pricing for Super Street Fighter 4

Christian Svensson, vice president of strategic planning & business Development at Capcom US, has explained why the upcoming release of Super Street Fighter IV is neither a full price game nor a budget release.

“It’s $40,” Svensson told Gamasutra. “We had two choices, and the economics didn’t work out on one… No matter what, we were fracturing the userbase, and we had to start from scratch.”

“There was no way to just sort of do an update on the DLC, and if we’d done what we did Lost Planet Colonies – I don’t know if you’ll recall – basically it had everything had the first game had and a ton more. And we did that as our Platinum package. The problem is that it gets a new title ID, which means no cross-play with the original consumers. And the other part is designing the game around, figuring out who has which package, even if you could do that. So, we knew we had to go from scratch.”

The other point, explained Svensson, is the fact Super Street Fighter IV features so much new content, making a “platinum” tag inappropriate. This is why the publisher has settled for a price point $10 above that of budget releases.

If owners of the original version are still on the fence over whether to buy the ‘Super’ edition, Svensson has a surprise that might make you change your mind.

“We haven’t announced it, but for those who have purchased and played Street Fighter IV on the system that they play this on, there will be a nifty little special set of things that those people will have the option of enjoying that others won’t,” he revealed.

Super Street Fighter IV is scheduled for release on April 30 for Xbox 360 and PS3.