14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Capcom has confirmed that it will be launching 12 new characters for the PC, PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 versions of Street Fighter x Tekken during the fall of the year, when the PlayStation Vita version of the game launches.
The Sony handheld Street Fighter x Tekken already has the characters integrated and will offer them from launch day while those who play on other platforms will have to pay in order to get access to them.
The characters that will be added include: Blanka, Cody, Dudley, Elena, Guy, Sakura from the Street Fighter side and Alisa Bosconovitch, Bryan Fury, Christie Monteiro, Jack, Lars Alexandersson, Lei Wulong from the Tekken universe.
The player base quickly reacted with anger to news that the characters are already available on the game disk that they will pick up this week but that they will have to wait in order to be able to play them.
Brett Elston, who is the community manager at Capcom, justified the move on the official Unity blog, saying, “By including these 12 characters on the disc, the idea was to ensure easy compatibility between players who do and do not choose to download the characters when they arrive as DLC.”
He added, “For example, not buying costumes in the Street Fighter IV series means you will not see the costumes when playing another person who did buy them; on-disc characters avoid this issue and allow everyone to participate in the update without additional patches or hiccups.
“The update also saves on file size - instead of a massive download, there will be a much smaller unlock that brings the new content to the surface.”
Capcom also says that integrating the characters at launch means that it will not be forced to launch a Super version of the game at a later date, in order to unify the various game communities created around different versions of the game.