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Street Fighter IV’s producer Yoshinori Ono has accused Capcom of viewing the BAFTA-nominated fighting game as “an unwanted child”, revealing that employees at the firm regularly asked him to pledge SFIV’s budget and resources into “something else that will make money”.
“Until the day of release, Street Fighter IV was an unwanted child,” Ono told Eurogamer.
“Everyone in the company kept telling me: ‘Ono-san, seriously why are you persisting with this? You are using so much money, budget and resources. Why don’t we use it on something else, something that will make money?’
“No-one had the intention of selling it, so I had virtually no help from other departments – they were all reluctant, right up to the day of release.”
Ono had to ‘pester’ his superiors to develop the game, he explained, with Capcom eventually bowing to pressure once fans and journalists “started making a lot of noise” for the series’ revival.
“I was working on Onimusha 4 and during that time I repeatedly submitted my proposal for a new Street Fighter,” he said. “The company kept telling me: ‘It’s a dead franchise. It doesn’t make any money. We have series that make money like Resident Evil and Onimusha. Why bother with a dead franchise?’
“Eventually I was given a small budget to create a prototype. That wasn’t really down to me pestering my superiors so much as all of the journalists and fans started making a lot of noise and pressuring Capcom.
“This was a strategic plot on my part. I had been asking all the journalists to make noise about the series when out and about. I would always tell them that it was their responsibility to tell Capcom, not me as I don’t have the power. Journalists and fans have the power to move Capcom – not producers.
“With so many voices crying out for a Street Fighter game Capcom could no longer ignore it any more and so they gave the green light for a prototype and they asked me to create it. It’s a miracle that happened after a decade…”
Street Fighter IV launched in February 2008 to critical and commercial success, prompting Capcom to release two updates to the game in the years that followed.
The success of the fighter and its updates, it seems, made an impact on Capcom’s business model. The publisher now releases a new fighting game during the same window each year.
This year it launched Street Fighter X Tekken. However, sales of the game ‘fell short’ of Capcom’s plan.
