I've been hearing rumors lately around my meta about FFG dropping the Street Fighter license for a year, thanks to losing it to a Japanese trading card company. I've also heard that they may not pick it up again.

Is this true or is this just wild speculation on the part of my UFS playing friends? If true will we get to see new character cards or other Street Fighter promos before next year?

Yeah, they might not release a single set for a year but i'm pretty sure it will do much like the soul calibur liscence. Perso, i'm pretty happy they stop the steet fight hype, then we could see more new stuff.

DrUnK3n_PaNdA said:

For a year starting now, meaning there's a good chance Set 15 will have a SF set. PROVIDED they still have the license. But since we didn't hear anything about that...

UFS and Capcom share a good relationship and nothing was 'lost'

SF sets will just be on the back burner for a few sets

street fighter gone?! this is not good news, street fighter is the face of ufs. yes it alows the other license to have more sets, but i think this is bad for the game.

trane said:

It's not gone, they just won't be making a SF set for awhile (kind if like how it was a long time between the newest and last SC sets).

JDub said:

the diference between sf and sc is huge. street fighter is the backbone of the game.

And yet people complain about Ryu and Chun-Li being up to nine incarnations and other characters from other licenses not being printed =/

Personally, I'm rather amused that they printed Remy, particularly because I asked at Worlds about the likelihood of (at that time) unprinted characters being created, specifically naming Remy (mostly because he was the first person from SF that came to mind) and Eagle (the character I want the most).

trane, I wouldn't say that Street fighter is the backbone of the game. If I am correct, the first set was Street Fighter and Soul Calibur. Now I will admit that one year without my favorite game franchise in the UFS getting a new set sort of sucks to a degree, but since I am getting SF IV in February, I feel as though I can live due to a new edition being injected into my system. On the uber plus side, we get to see what the other franchises will be doing and I am more excited about Shadowar than all the other releases. You will see that UFS backbone is the game itself and not the franchises. They just make it better.

MegaGeese said:

Dude there's way too many Ryus and Chun-Lis, but definitely not enough Rolentos.

trane said:

Was in reference to this post. I absolutely agree, we need a pack Rolento, an Eagle, and a handful of other characters, and less Ryu and Chun-Li.

But for people to complain about that, and then complain about there not being another SF release for about a year, is crap. You can't have it both ways =/

It's hard to fathom what losing Street Fighter would do to this game.

That being said, I can also say that Ryu and Chun-Li are flagship characters, so get used to a lot of them.

TyrusVox said:

That doesn't mean we have to like it. It's irritating as hell, but I know why this is done. Especially with the Chun-Li movie coming out soon...

After that flop, if Chunners is still a flagship character, I'll be damned.

Soul Calibur is probably attracts more people to this game than Street Fighter does.

*STAMP*

I doubt any liscencing was lost. Steve did tell us that he's calming down on getting the SF sets out since we've had so many.

I dont really think this is true. Each license has its place in the game besides SC and SF are the original base sets so neither is going anywhere SF is just taking a lil break thats all.

If you want to hear more about the licenses listen to our podcast the first interview with steve will be up thursday or friday .

TripsEX said:

So true. It did for me.

If SC get out of UFS, so am i... probably....

Mt_Do said:

Well, actually the first release for the game was Penny Arcade, but I digress, I'm sure what Admiral Ren said on the first page is correct, this will be like the break in between SC04 and SC05. The license hasn't gone anywhere, they're just giving the other licenses a chance to catch up with SF, since it currently has the more sets released, in fact, I'm better we'll still see a Street Fighter set in '09, but it probably won't be until around X-mas, since I would imagine that FFG is probably trying to get the SFIV characters for the next set which will likely require renewing the license or something to that effect.

Anyway, here's my guess at how this year is gonna break down...

March: Soul Calibur IV (SC07) / ShadoWar (SW01)

June: KoF/SamSho (SNK06) / Darkstalkers (DS03)

September: Soul Calibur (SC08) / New Licence (This is just a wild guess here...)

December: Street Fighter IV (SF10) / ShadoWar (SW02)

Again, this is just pure speculation, but to me this release schedule would just make sense.

I like SF games, but this news is awesome.

-First, it opens up room for another license acquisition. Power-level stuff aside, I'm not too thrilled about ShadoWar. I just can't get excited about it whatsoever. It just comes across as too generic to be interesting, but just original enough to be ugly. That said, the possibility of an additional license would be a welcome thing indeed.

-Second, Street Fighter 4 doesn't even look that hot. I'm not hopeful that Capcom can pull off what they're trying to in an actually likable way, and if SF4 flops, some distance between UFS and SF is going to be healthier for UFS than for SF to be the "soul of the game". Sad, but true, and there's a very real chance that'll come up.

-The vast concentration on Street Fighter sets was a big factor in the recent trend with UFS attacks becoming more and more generic and having less "identity" outside of their flavor text. Attacks in UFS have really gone from being tied to their "flavor" (aka Roundhouse-type attacks do this, etc.) to having no aesthetic connection between what attack they "are" and what the stat blocks say. We're just looking at the latter and running numbers rather than running "Shoryukens".

This really does matter for a card game, although some of us might've stopped thinking in those terms. If we think back to when we first picked up the game, it's not hard to see why this is a VERY important concept in game promotion and to some degree in the actual design.

The Street Fighter sets compounded this problem massively by printing the same old attack concepts over and again without as much heed to "theming the stats". Conversely, the Darkstalkers sets really put some life back into UFS in this regard, and while I've never touched a Darkstalkers game in my life, I really applaud the set design and artists for making attacks an interesting card type. SNK has been somewhere in the middle. The games have enough variety for this endeavor, and mechanics like Breaker and particularly Desperation were excellent at putting some identity into the license. The individual cards just started falling into a genericness rut, and when you start seeing Desperation and Breaker primarily on other licenses' cards, the magic gets flat-out dispelled.

-If nothing else, it means an extra SNK set can squeak in, as in my case I want all the SNK I can get until FFG finally buckles down and puts Shizumaru in (preferably viable) character form. He and the gluttony-demon guy are like the only characters in SamShodown 5 not to have character cards at all yet. Shizumaru probably isn't a priority in the minds of many other UFS players, but I would like to point out that his arsenal of attacks, at least, are extremely good fodder for the attack-identity desire mentioned above.

TripsEX said:

I hate Soul Calibur and all of its games, they are not good, the game engine is awful and they aren't any fun. To that end, I do not buy boxes or even packs of SC or any of the licenses I do not like. I buy singles from eBay or CoolStuff, but I still play the game.

But I have 2 players who are going to stop playing UFS until another SF set is released. They say that if UFS isn't gonna stay loyal to Street Fighter, then they won't stay loyal to UFS. Alot of the players I have got in because I mentioned Street Fighter, 1 player came in because of Darkstalkers and 2 because of Samurai Showdown (with one still pissed it is combined with the KoF 2006, it was such a grabage game.) I have not had anyone join because of Soul Calibur or Kof 2006. But I guess it's just because 3D fighters are always so bad.

As for the way too many Ryu, Cammy and Chun-Li... yeah, there are too many of them,but only because they are primarily, all so bad. I cannot think of 1 Chun-Li I have ever wanted to play. Only 1 or 2 truly tournament viable Ryu's and 1 or 2 Cammy's? If you're gonna flood us with a particular character, at leat make them good. There is a very simple solution, don't put them in a set. I know Capcom has a say in it, but, if you are gonna annoy/upset your players and potentially make less money/lose interest in the game, thelll Capcom to chill. There are plenty of characters left that you can make. I just hope that we will eventually get a Samurai Showdown only SNK set. KoF 2006 got one, and really, that game drags down the SNK sets. Here's to hoping they can get good Kof like XI, or maybe the upcoming XII.

Nionel said:

Fixed for what I heard from reading the old forums.

UFS not loyal to SF? seriously, we ended up getting SF stuff either in promos or sets every month. so thats not that bad if they just slow down a little.

I really think the decision of 4 sets a year as an initial objective was a potentially fatal flaw in selling the game, as opposed to 3/year or something.

Nowadays there are more licenses to work with and by using smaller sets, 4 sets a year can be a reasonable pace to sell players on. In this context a year off of Street Fighter is a veritable necessity in order for other franchises to get worked in.

For friggin' sake. How much did people complain when SC didn't get a set for such a long time? An entire year between Higher Calibur and Flash of the Blades, and it was all "we want SC, stop making SF". Now when they go to take time off to relax the SF, renew the license to get MORE characters, and then give us exactly what we've been asking for (there could well be a SamSho only set coming, we don't know!), what do people do.

THE SAME **** THING.

Stuff like this is very frustrating, and what drives most people away from the forums.

And I know at least one player who was brought in by SNK - me. Granted, the rumor of Darkstalkers were a very major part, but Mai, Iori, and the promise of Geese and Rock brought me into this game. Let's call it 50/50. Valid point is valid. Just because KoF '06 sucks, doesn't mean sets shouldn't be made for their characters. I could rant about this for days. Instead I'll go do something more prodcutive than banging my head against a brick wall.