street-fighter posts

On Sunday we reported that Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,the second live action feature film based on Capcom's fighting game series, bombed in its first weekend at the US box office. Box Office Mojo now has the final numbers, stating that the film brought in just $4.7 million to come in eighth place. The results were lower than the first weekend's box office for the 1994 Street Fighter movie.

Even with the poor reception from movie goers and critics, Capcom is not deterred by the inital results. Our sister site GameDaily chatter with Capcom's Corporate PR head Chris Kramer who stated, "Critics were unkind to the first Street Fighter movie as well, but that film has been ridiculously profitable for Capcom over the last decade. The original SF movie still generates millions of dollars in royalties for Capcom every year, thanks to cable, foreign distribution, home video, DVD and Blu-ray sales."

In fact Capcom might earn even more from the second film since it's the first time Capcom entered into a co-production deal with the movie studio that made the film. The publisher already has another movie under this new deal that has completed filming (Onimusha) and other films based on their game properties are under development, including Lost Planet.

Capcom has lucky in seeing a number of movies made based on their games. There's been three Resident Evil live action films and a CGI movie was released in the US this December on DVD. In February a new Street Fighter film heads to theaters.

But Capcom isn't stopping there. In a new (English) interview on the company's web site, itts Head of Character Content Business, Toshihiro Tokumaru, chatted about future movie plans. One of them is the previously announced adaptation of Lost Planet which Warner Bros. is producing. Tokumaru states that the movie "will cost somewhere between 150 and 200 million dollars to make." That budget is certainly in the high end of sci-fi action films but at the moment there's no word on when production will actually begin.

The trend to adapt games into comics has become massive with World of Warcraft, Bionic Commando, Mirror's Edge, Gears of War, Halo and more either already released in comic form or coming soon. Now Udon Entertainment has announced plans to adapt Capcom's upcoming fighting game Street Fighter IV in a four-issue comic book mini-series.

Udon already has tons of experience as they have published a number of previous comics based on the Street Fighter franchise. The first issue of this new mini-series is scheduled to ship to comic book stores in February and Udon states the stories in the comic "are linked directly to the game." The comic should be released around the same time as the console versions of the game (the PC version is expected to be released sometime later).

Bionic Commando isn't the only multiplatform game that's being shown at the Tokyo Game Show by Capcom. The publisher is also showing off Street Fighter IV, the next game in their long running fighting game series. Many were surprised when Capcom announced this game would be coming to the PC alongside its console counterparts.

For TGS, Capcom has released new screenshots for the game, depicting more of the cel-shaded style of art that the Street Fighter series is known for. We will have to wait until 2009 for the game's release. Capcom reportedly plans to wait until the upcoming Street Fighter live action film heads to theaters to ship Street Fighter IV.

How often have you groaned at seeing that one of your favorite movies, books, comic books, or even TV shows was going to be making the jump to video game status? How often have your fears been justified? Perhaps a better question would be: How often have you been pleasantly surprised by a video game adaptation?

It's an all-too-common scenario: based on the sales numbers of a given property, a media conglomerate will sell a license out to whomever thinks they might do a good job of spreading the brand to different markets. A movie will turn into a novelization, a comic book adaptation, a spin-off television series, a direct-to-DVD movie, a line of toys and assorted merchandise, and eventually, a video game. The wisdom of this approach seems to lie in the idea that "If they liked it once, they'll like it again". In many cases, adapting a book to a movie is relatively innocuous; many survive the transition quite well. When it comes to making a video game from a movie, or book, or any other medium, however, all bets are off. Why? It's because the strengths of one medium are not the strengths of another.

Capcom released it's annual report for 2008 and if you scan down the PDF document you will find that the upcoming next Street Fighter motion picture is due out in February 2009. This second attempt to make a film based on the fighting game series stars Kristen Kreuk as Chun-Li, Neil McDonough as Bison and Michael Clark Duncan and is being directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak who previously directed the film version of id Software's Doom franchise.

The movie is expected to be released close to the release of the long awaited Street Fighter IV, the years-in-the-making next game in the fighting game series. Currently Street Fighter IV, which will be released on the PC and other platforms, has a first quarter 2009 release. Capcom stated in its annual report it expects to sell 1.7 million copies of the game in its fiscal year.

Street Fighter IV is intended to reawaken a classic franchise -- a franchise that's been dormant so long, it's hard to even picture it in today's 3D, hundred-million-dollar-budget gaming world. A 2D fighter in 2008? Can it be done?

The latest trailer from Capcom ought to sell you on the idea if you're skeptical. Let's face it, though; if you grew up playing Street Fighter in the 90s, then you're probably not all that skeptical. You're probably just plain psyched. Either way, we have the new trailer here for you. It displays several characters new and old. It's full of great artwork and impossibly epic special moves. It's also a whopping four minutes long. If you've been craving Street Fighter IV content, today's your lucky day!

When you watch it, you might even start to wonder if 2.5D is the new 3D.

Download the Street Fighter IV Gameplay Trailer from Big Download.

Capcom has been putting more and more effort into its PC game line-up but few expected that one of their most anticipated games, Street Fighter IV, would be released for our platform. Simply put, fighting games just don't appear on the PC. So we got excited when we first learned that Capcom's long awaited 3D (with 2D backgrounds) revamp of the Street Fighter series would be on a PC hard drive.

Now Capcom has launched their official Street Fighter web site to help promote the game along with a truckload of new screenshots. More importantly, the site linked to the Gamestop web site that offers pre-orders of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions with a ship date of Feb. 3, 2009. Now naturally release dates for games can (and usually do) change and both the official game site and the Gamestop pre-order page don't even mention the PC version. But at least there's some kind of road-map we can use to guage when we can expect Street Fighter IV to appear.

Earlier in the week we reported that PC gamers would likely have the chance to square off in Capcom's upcoming Street Fighter IV on PC as well as next-gen consoles, and last night Capcom confirmed it's happening (via IGN).

Street Fighter IV becomes the first in franchise history to release simultaneously on consoles and PC and further solidifies Capcom's recent admiration for the platform. In recent months, after shying away from PC development, Capcom has released Lost Planet and plans a July release for Devil May Cry 4--two high-profile console titles.

While no details regarding Street Fighter IV were announced, we expect more information at Capcom's upcoming Captivate08 event in Las Vegas.