So if you’re in the dark, Capcom announced Ultimate Capcom vs. Marvel 3 today as a new, stand-alone game for $39.99 which will be released on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 November 15, 2011. Mind you, that is less than a year from the previous Marvel vs. Capcom 3 release (Feb, 2011).
Re-balancing Act Gone Awry
Gamers are upset. The game features re-balancing for one thing. That’s a sure sign that Capcom knew the first one was broken balance-wise and just didn’t fix it. In fact, they didn’t even try to fix it with any kind of update apparently (correction: There were two title updates, yet people still admit the game has issues). Instead, they decided a whole new game was needed to fix it and a new updated fighting system would do the trick.
Another thing that many gamers are angry about is that this new version will have 12 new characters, something that many claim should have been done with the original game through DLC. The industry has been pushing hard that DLC extends the lifetime of big box games helping them justify big budgets for these games. Then Capcom goes and shoots that in the foot by deciding to release a whole new game for retail purchase instead of maintaining the previous game with more than a token set of DLC (only 2 characters, one costume pack, Shadow battles).
New Character Merit New Game?
The 12 characters? Already leaked: Marvel - Ghost Rider, Hawkeye, Dr.Strange, Nova, Iron Fist, and Rocket Raccoon. Then Vergil, Phoenix Wright, Frank West, Firebrand, Strider, and Nemesis on the Capcom. (in bold confirmed by Capcom)
Even this has sparked some controversy among gamers. Venom was cited as one of the most asked for characters and yet Nova and Rocket Raccoon made the cut, leaving Venom somewhere out in the cold or perhaps as a DLC option for the future.
Of course, now that all of this has leaked, maybe they’ll go rethink it all, or perhaps it was a smoke screen strategy?
What that most likely is, is a list of potential candidates. It’s entirely possible that’s not the actual list. First off, there are no new female characters and in MvC3 there were 12 females so not adding new ones would not be the wisest decision. Gamers like their female fighters.
It seems most likely that this was meant to throw people off, or someone at Capcom is totally out of touch with the gamers. I’m guessing it’s probably a smoke screen. All of the images have been pulled down by Capcom since they were originally discovered.
