The extreme difficulty level may be a turn off to anyone less than a hardcore Street Fighter fan.
The long awaited Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting has finally hit XBLA, and not really being a big Street Fighter fan, I still managed to get caught up in all the hype. And after several hours of game play, there are two words that can describe this game to a tee: "very" and "hard".
Granted I'm not the most skilled fighting game person around, but this is borderline ridiculous. A lot of the hardcore fans I'm sure are pleased, but what about the casual player such as myself? I mean, I thought Microsoft was trying to reach out to a wider audience with the Xbox 360 (as opposed to catering to the hardcore crowd of super-fans). Maybe instead of putting so much time into creating a "perfect port" they should try and adjust the game so its more accessible, and more people can enjoy it. Simply put: a game this difficult isn't going to appeal to a lot of people.
The fact of the matter is that yes, today's generation of gamers are used to easier games, but we are speaking about today's generation, not 1991's generation, so being called "a bad player" by a SF veteran is a bit unfair in my opinion.
Besides the difficulty level, everything else seems to be done very well. The graphics and audio provide a nostalgia to early 90's gaming (even to those who played games back then (like myself) but didn't specifically play the Street Fighter games).
So, if your a hardcore Street Fighter player/fan, you have a better chance at enjoying the arcade mode, but for the casual player of fighting games such as myself or you don't have any means to play the multi-player modes, online or off, you might want to wait for the next fighting game on XBLA, which should be Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 if I'm correct, to see how it fares out.