Street Fighter 5 Aims to Appeal to "Newer, Younger" Audience With "Accessible" Gameplay

@Kunakai: Just seems like they are trying to grow their fanbase to me. A lot of casuals seem to dislike the high skill bar to entry. Lowering it risks losing the people who like the more complicated and technical aspects of the game.

I'm sure any business would love the attention Street Fighter once had but I don't think Capcom is being unrealistic in simply trying get whoever they can to play. When fighting game were big, it was cause they were new-ish and a lot of people were just mashing buttons and enjoying what was at the time instant gratification. They can't really surprised those kinds of people again. They've moved on and probably look down on fighting games. What else can fighting game developers do?

And I wish more people were into fighting games for the high level play. It's awesome.

@Kunakai:

Maybe among your friends it's not as popular, but with the release of SF4 (and the succeeding versions) the popularity of the franchise soared and brought a fighting game revival. SF is still played consistently by many players around the world for 7 years and tournaments are hosted almost weekly on Twitch. At EVO this year, SF was the biggest tournament with over 200+ entrants (largest amount ever) and garnered some of the highest total and unique views in streaming history.

@Thanatos2k: It doesn't bother me unless I play for more than 2 hours using the dpad like that. Try finding a controller with a more comfortable grip/buttons? Or like King said above get a fight stick.

@UnbornCorpser: Did you ever consider that maybe lightning powers come from Brazil? Maybe everyone out there can use them. That doesn't make them all Blanka clones. And if a person really wanted to pick at it, Dee Jay's powers are sort of lightning, so are other characters.

Anyway, not all characters have been revealed yet. Even after they show them all off, there's going to be a lot more added to the game as time goes on. I'm sure we'll be seeing all of the classic characters at some point.

@Fenixx: You're mistaken. People played the game for years justifying another upgrade with more characters just a year ago. It was STILL selling. Maybe non-fighting game players stopped playing but not the majority.
Now, look at their last offering, SFxT. It was nothing but simplified gameplay. The Tekken and Street Fighter name sold it. They made one upgrade and added characters and did that make anyone want to play it? Nope. They were even offering a car and cash bonuses to get people playing. They literally couldn't pay most to keep playing the simplified pos.
Capcom can look at their own history and see that this philosophy doesn't apply to fighting games but they are trying really hard to force it and the only people that seem to like the idea are those that couldn't play it on pad or stick which is pretty ridiculous since the system is so lenient you can literally mash special moves out.
How about SF2:HDRemix? It got a few more players interested because it was a new release. Then what happened? Even those players went back to a 20 year old game because the simplified version was an abomination. Even the players that were introduced to SF2 with that game preferred the more serious and skillful version.

SF is like the martial arts of fighting games. You master skills and techniques that you take into combat. People that enjoy fighting games aren't looking to mash out wins.

Capcom just didn't realize why people preferred Street Fighter over other fighting games. All that was needed was for Sony to advertise it like MK gets advertised. SF usually sold on name recognition and quality. The Sony marketing machine would have made it sell out. It's doubtful it will, now. We all know it's a beginner game, now. They should have made a new series if they wanted to try it out. They should have learned from SFxT. That was a game guaranteed to succeed and they failed to deliver the goods and here we are again.