I don’t think it mattered that much it not being on X1 if the game was more well received critically. Now those 300K sales would be mighty appealing. But MS doesn’t want to play nice with PC/Consoles playing together, at least not at the time of this deal, so it’s their fault.
I think SFV will be fine over time. Think it will hit 3 million over the next 2 years and then go free to play.
Yea, as I saying, it's just an additional factor (and not close to the most important one). If SFV were selling like the PS4 version of Mortal Kombat X due to amazing reviews, then it'd be considered fine most likely... but then, the more it sells in that case, the larger the potential XB1 sales also would've been.
As for the crossplatform stuff. That's their prerogative (both Capcom and MS), but at this point I'm questioning how valuable that actually is. The game's sold only like 150k on Steam so far, and it's not even as though it's been holding its playerbase well either. The combined Street Fighter V community is currently smaller than the individual communities of Street Fighter IV, the game is hardly blowing Twitch up, it has no arcade version, etc... I don't think this crossplatform stuff has been worth the assumed tradeoffs, and means precisely nothing to basically everyone in the expanded audience that's not currently buying the game anyway.
It's not even like the crossplatform stuff even works very well. I bought the game on PC, and my friend bought the game on PS4. We basically never play together, because unless we both happen to be playing at the same time, we have zero visibility of each other. I had to contact him on WhatsApp to find out his CFN ID initially, because I can't find him by his PSN whilst I'm playing via Steam and vice-versa. I don't even know if other people I have on PSN have SFV unless I go check via my PS4, and then start sending speculative invitations to find each other. Hell, if I move to the PS4 version instead, I don't even get to take my current CFN ID with me. It really doesn't feel like one big happy Street Fighter family, and so I found it strange that a port to other platforms would hinge on their inclusion.
SF3's biggest issue was that arcade owners had to essentially buy a whole new board just for SF3 and they were asked to do this when arcades began to decline. I remember New Generation charging $1 a play at my local arcade back in the 90's which was ridiculous. And the advanced hardware that the game required was likely why it was DreamCast exclusive and not on PS1 like the Alpha games.
I think multiple versions of Street Fighter has a negative impact on future casual sales, definitely. Capcom seems to believe this as well considering how much they pushed the message that it's the only disc of SFV you'll have to buy. SFV likely would have sold better if the last SF we saw prior was vanilla SF4. Not that I'd give up SSF4, AE, or USF4 just so the market wouldn't feel oversaturated.
Yea, the arcades were pretty much rumbled at that point. But it's not that big a factor imo, because the audience that Capcom was losing at this point weren't in the arcades anyway (hence their decline). Later Mortal Kombat games were prohibitively expensive as well with MK4, and then simply ceased having arcade versions at all. It didn't really matter though, because the only people that were frequenting the arcades at this point were the niche pool of devoted players.. and they would typically be just as likely to appear at local gatherings for their chosen games as well.
Also, I don't think you should have had to give up SSF4 etc.. but they shouldn't have been a separate release of the game drawing a line in the sand between it and anyone playing the previous version. If they wanted to iterate, they really should have created the Killer Instinct / Dead or Alive update model prior to those games doing it.
