So it turns out some sleazeballs are holding the DLC characters for the Xbox 360 version hostage. 14 locked characters have been discovered in the disc's contents, presumably as time-release content, and Capcom gave us all the impression that Xbox 360 players wouldn't have any of them at all. Whilst everyone blames Capcom over this mess, I suspect the treachery lies much higher up the chain.

So someone hacked those DLC dudes in. According to my sources, not only are they fully playable complete with alternate appearances and trials and everything, turns out they're not even DLC after all; they'll be triggered to open with a regular update. So the only question left is when. Genius.



On a less depressing note, I've been having a time with this game and Roglento is my main team at the moment.

My brother tells me Tekken 6, but if I didn't know any better I woulda assumed they're RPG imports.

That's not how regular updates work, Capcom!

Quote:

Hot on the heels of its March 6 release date, SFxT is about to kick off regular updates - meant to keep the experience fresh all through the year - with a blend of free and paid DLC. ... Swap Costumes are available for $1.00 (80 Microsoft Points) each, or if you wanna dive in for the whole assortment you can pick up the Street Fighter or Tekken collection packs for $13.00 (1040 MSP) each - buying one pack saves $6.00, grabbing both saves $12.00. April 3 also brings three free color packs, each containing four new additions to the palette for added customization options. Topping off the April 3 additions are three new quick combos, making for a total of five pre-programmed attack patterns. While spamming these pre-set combos is tempting, don't forget each use saps some of your Cross Gauge! ... The biggest additions come soon after the PlayStation Vita version launches later this year - the 12 characters debuting on Vita will come to consoles as a $20.00 (1600 MSP) bundle. I know many were worried past character pricing would push the cost of this update sky high, so I'm happy to say Blanka, Sakura, Guy, Cody, Elena, Dudley, Alisa, Bryan, Christie, Jack, Lars and Lei will not break the bank. One additional note - the dev team is also already working on solutions to the infinite combos currently making the rounds on YouTube, and will have them patched up once these other updates are out the door. I know this was a massive wall of text, so for further clarity, here's everything we discussed above. This all begins on April 3 with Swap Costumes, color packs and quick combos, and then rolls out over the next several weeks: FREE Nine new gem packs totaling 60+ new gems Replay analyzer Tournament support for gem selection Three new quick combo pre-sets Three additional gem loadout slots Three new color packs with four colors each PAID Swap Costumes - $1.00 (80 MSP) each or in two $13.00 (1040 MSP) Street Fighter and/or Tekken packs DLC characters - $20.00 (1600 MSP) for all 12 new fighters

As much as I want to say that the massive fallout could have all been avoided by simply not putting the things on the disc, there isn't a big enough backlash. There are currently 270 comments on the Capcom-Unity announcement, which is not nearly enough to indicate the universal disdain needed to end this practice for good. Even if they didn't get all hacked in within weeks of release, imagine the final legitimate release and noticing that the updates took less than a minute to finish. Did they really think this through?

The only thing that doesn't make sense is why they insisted on leaving the completed content in the hands of the customers and trusting them to not hack it. History has shown that this has happened before and they really ought to know better by now. I can only imagine that all of this is to push the Vita as the platform of the future, but that still doesn't explain why they allowed this to happen. The only answer I have left is bandwidth concerns, but that holds very little water in 2012 when that's essentially a non-issue. If I were to blame anyone, I would select the Vita for all the favoritism it's apparently getting as a result of this mess.

And let's not forget the people who are using all of this stuff right now, who are essentially transparently cheating just in time for next year's tournaments.

ALSO: The current DLC totals to $46, more than two-thirds of the original price of the game, with more to come. It's exactly as I feared. Street Fighter X Tekken is the Call of Duty of fighting games. (And I thought it would be due to those gems.)

That's exactly my point--people clearly don't approve of this, but they're making enough money to justify continuing it. And this will happen forever, unless not enough people buy it, and even then, this would have to happen many times in a row for it to end for good. And let's not think about how Namco is going to top this.

My biggest problem with the reaction to this is the people who aren't smart enough to keep this information on the down-low. There will always be people who use hacks, but I can't stand the people who flaunt them online just begging to be caught. Same with game sites that make loving reports about those famous DS flashcarts that only give them more publicity and the commenters who smugly inform everyone that they "won't" or "don't" use them. Good going showing the authorities your hand, everyone.