I think a lot of people are under the impression that the console release of Street Fighter 4 will mean bad news for the arcade scene. These fears are unfounded though because the console release of Street Fighter games typically strengthens the existing local community.  I’m going to walk through a couple of reasons why the console release is only going to make the arcade scene stronger.

Online Gaming Leaves A Lot to be Desired

Even if the netcode for Street Fighter 4 is good enough to make online play viable, playing online is still not good enough to replace playing in the arcade. Part of the experience of playing in the arcade is the community aspect of hanging out with a bunch of likeminded players trying to level up their respective games.

The fact is, the majority of the people who will be playing Street Fighter 4 online will have no idea that the competitive fighting game scene even exists. This means dealing with more than a few “super scrubs” who just bought the game to try and relive their past “glory” days.

No offense to those guys, but there is no way you can get better playing them, so don’t think that it’s going to be easy to get a lot of quality experience playing most people online.

More people learning at home means more people playing in tournaments.

A major reason that people have been waiting to play Street Fighter 4 is that they don’t want to pay up to $1.00 to learn a game that is coming out on console in a relatively short period of time. Once these players have had time to actually sit down and learn the game risk-free, you can bet that they’ll be more willing to test their skills in the real world, so to speak.

If these players start playing in the arcade regularly, they will eventually become a force to be reckoned with.  Once they get their feet wet in the arcade, they’ll most likely either enter the next local tournament to see how they stack up against other players.

More tournament players means more competition between tournaments.

After these new players feel confident enough to enter tournaments, I’m pretty positive most of them will do well enough to want to enter the next tournament. You can bet that once they get that first taste of tournament victory, they’ll be back for more.

This means they will be practicing hard in the days leading up to the next tourney to improve their performance. And as these guys level up, we all level up, because good competition breeds even better competition, as we all know.

The new characters will only be available on console

I think Capcom will definitely come through on this one. I anticipate that there will be an arcade update with the new characters (minus playable Seth/Gouken probably) that will coincide with the console release.

Keep in mind that the Japanese arcade market is huge for Capcom. Lots of arcades over there have a dozen Vrelix cabinets which retailed for approximately $40,000 for a set of four. These arcades are owned by big companies who would not be pleased with Capcom if their $120,000 investment was instantly rendered obsolete with no update available.

So don’t worry about the release of Street Fighter 4 ruining local competition.  The fact is that anybody who is already playing SF4 in their local arcade isn’t going to just stop now that they can play at home.  They will work on new tricks and tactics at home and then test it out in person against the best in their area.