DryEyeRelief
Member
What other genres are you talking about?
Street Fighter 4 bringing 2D fighting games back was part of a greater trend of developers realizing that older style games with updated graphics could work in present day. It was mostly due to services like Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade, which allowed people to download old titles. And as a result older style games were given a face lift, like the New Super Mario Bros Series, or Pac Man Championship Edition.
As for 3D fighting games, interest in them from non-enthusiasts was already waning before SF4. I think fighting games that iterate a lot, but fail to reinvigorate interest from the general public, are doomed to meet the same fate. Soul Calibur had a huge chance of being like the current Mortal Kombat. But Namco fucked that up. It has nothing to do with 2D or 3D.
If you want me to come up with a reason why 2D fighters regained popularity...I think the style being derived from older technology actually helped. 2D fighting games like Street Fighter were forced to communicate more on screen with less available to them. More outlandish concepts were formed as well. 3D fighters in contrast, were about accentuating the newer technology, so they weren't about producing cartoon spectacle, but having a focus on melee combat and attempted realism. Street Fighter 4 came at a time where fighting games in general were waning, so there wasn't a large assertion from the public that 3D fighters were superior like before. With graphics for the 360/PS3 generation, they were able to produce a game that was captivating in a way Tekken and Virtua Fighter weren't. Of course the game about a karate dude that shoots plasma from his hands and has a roundhouse kick that turns him into a helicopter is going to capture more hearts than the game with the karate dude that mimics a chinese fighting style in real life.
