I’ve always had this image with fighting games that unless I dropped a couple of hundred dollars — minimum — on a fighting stick, I’d always be struggling to obtain the level of precision necessary to even think about improving on a decent scale. It’s rubbish, of course, although watching EVO year on year provided plenty of anecdotal proof that there were more competitive players with fighting sticks than those on gamepads.
But according to Capcom’s director of esports and brand marketing, fighting sticks won’t be necessary in Street Fighter 5.
In a new interview with Gamesindustry, Matt Dahlgren was being quizzed on how Capcom being exclusive to the PS4 would actually help the game competitively. Having your player base fragmented over multiple platforms is always frustrating for any competitive scene, and it’s doubly frustrating when the performance of the game varied depending on what platform you played on.
But what intrigued me was a section towards the end of the interview, where Dahlgren was quizzed on the necessity of having an arcade stick for tournament play. “Since Street Fighter comes from an arcade heritage, a lot of people have this general belief that arcade sticks are the premier way of playing,” he explained.
“In the competitive scene, we’ve seen the rise of a lot of very impressive pad players, which has pretty much shown that Street Fighter is a game that’s not necessarily dictated by the controller you play with; it’s the strategies and tactics you employ. And both of them are essentially on equal playing ground.”
It’s also true that more players are going to be playing on a gamepad than a stick, but that’s just the nature of the hundreds of thousands of copies (if not millions) that Capcom’s latest fighter is likely to sell versus the amount of people who own and buy added peripherals worth hundreds of dollars.
Street Fighter 5 is due out on PC and PS4 on February 16.
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11 responses to “You Won’t Need A Fighting Stick To Compete In Street Fighter 5, Capcom Says”
I’m certainly not a high-level player, but I’ve always personally preferred a pad to a stick. Mostly because that’s what I’m used to.
You just have to put your hand on top so that instead of trying to access the 4 face buttons with your thumb you use your 3 fingers, pretty much the same as you would on an arcade stick. Then you’re good to go.
My 90s was nothing but beat-em-ups.
Yes I still call them that.
However, my skills (if I could call them that) waned considerably and keeping abre…track of all the new elements in these games proved quite difficult.
I was overjoyed at the love and care that made SF2 Turbo HD a reality, but accept that Capcom/their fans took to the new bling of 4 with such conviction.
I want to dip my toe into this, like I did with Starcraft 2 in 2010 (again, my 90s gaming highlights featured a lot of RTS) and that worked out OK.
I played the heck out of SF2 Turbo HD on xbox live… mainly the classic mode.
There’s actually a difference between beat ’em ups and fighting games.
Beat ’em ups were side scrolling games (recently you get 3D ones as well) where you beat up waves of bad guys before progressing, for example games like Double Dragon, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and Turtles in Time. Two (or sometimes more) players would generally play cooperatively.
Fighting games on the other hand tend to be strictly 1v1 competitive play, either against another human or the AI (though some games like Smash allow more than just 1v1).
Fighting games kind of evolved from the beat ’em up genre but they are two pretty different beasts at the end of the day.
I thought the side scrollers were brawlers?
Side scrollers were beat ’em ups, just like side scrolling (or even vertical scrolling) shooters were called shoot ’em ups. Although some people still called them brawlers I guess but officially they were called beat ’em ups.
I’m curious. As an old man who is out of touch with the kids of today, what is the new, hip term for “Beat’em up”?
“Retro”.
They’re just no longer made. There are some indie games, Double Dragon Neon came out a few years back, but it’s a kind of dead genre. Unless you count games like the Arkham series as being the modern continuation, but then they’re just generic “Open World Action/Adventure”.
You mean stuff like God Hand, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, MGR Revengeance? I’ve seen “crazy action game” thrown around, but I don’t think that’s like an official designation or anything.
I am ready for this. I have a TE2 stick for PS3 and from what I’ve heard they will be compatible.
I’ve been telling you this, Alex. You can play fighters with a pad.
Generally speaking, the average person will do better with an arcade stick than a generic control pad (eg. standard official PS4), simply due to the button placement. Analog triggers and bumpers are not a great place for buttons in a fighting game, especially if you’re called upon to press two of them at once with any degree of precision. Config can help, but only so much.
That being said, a pad does have advantages of its own, and if you can compensate for the disadvantages you can definitely be competitive. There are also specially designed fighting game pads with six+ face buttons (I know Madcatz makes one) which will probably suit people comfortable with control pads even more.
no, eeww – right thumb on 4 main buttons, right index for hk and hp, and clever binding and usage of lp mp hp buttons for alternatives, (SF4 for red focus for example, right thumb focus attack, left index on the 3x punch button = Red focus) – claw is fucking bad
I play using a keyboard. Been playing since sf4. I have all of them. My highest score on sf4 was 3400.
The steam version for sf4 ultra is really laggy. Stopped. But can’t wait for the next one!!!
I prefer controllers. But the dpad on the ps4 is terrible. Ps1 and ps2 controllers were way better for dpad fighters