I'm a smash player before anything else, and even I can't watch smash 4. It's so boring.
My GF has gotten into competitive SFV. Watches a lot of the televised events especially. She is as 'non-gamer' a person can get.
At EVO, I brought her to the EVO Grand Finals stage prior to SFV starting cause I wanted to get some solid seats for the event, which meant we had to sit through Smash 4 GF. Now, I personally think Smash 4 is an okay game to watch - she on the other hand absolutely
loathed it. After the first match, she just hated every single second of it. I felt so bad I promised her she'd never have to watch Smash 4 again lol.
I'm not trying to start SF4 vs. SFV again in here, I just want to post this now so it'll be available when that discussion inevitably pops up again. Reading how SF4's initial unpopularity being a Capcuck myth created to defend SFV has made me question my memory of reading all the bitching on SRK about it from pros and pro dickriders.
https://twitter.com/lolraid/status/893505893240799233
Sidenote: I agree that SFV was way more unpopular than SF4 ever was. SF4 had the casuals eating it up which SFV will probably never have.
This isn't even a phenomenon that is isolated to SF4 or V - SF3 was also hated & shat on in its initial release. SF games just get better as they get older, so everyone compares SFV or SF4 year one to ST or 3S, forgetting that it took literal years & multiple iterations before those games got to that point. Heck, people forget that the Turbo setting in SF2 basically changed the speed & helped the game get a 2nd wind. The FGC has a very, very bad long-term memory on this kind of thing.