Without a doubt, the artistic intro scene of Street Fighter IV blew me away when I first saw it, the use of ink, the brushstrokes and paint-like splashes that emphasis every movement, the rough and sketchy finish and the surreal atmosphere all scream character like nothing I've seen before. It was actually a major disappointment for me when I saw the actual gameplay footage for the first time and realize that the art-style was very different.

The game is still fantastic, and I have come to appreciate the ingame art-style as well, (and there are even a few moment where the 2 forms mix) but I am conscious of the fact that had Capcom chosen to be more bold and ambitious, Street Fighter IV could well be another step closer to the elusive high art in video game culture.

Without a doubt I would prefer the intro look. They would just make to tone it down enough to make sure it doesn't interfere with actual play.

The artstyle is very nice looking, but being that advanced NPR techniques take far more processing power than photo-realistic rendering I'm not certain if either the XBox 360 or PS3 could even produce a rough approximation to this in game.

Interesting, I had not thought it would be a limitation of technology rather than Capcom 'going it safe'. Not being tech savy, may I inquire if this is a bottleneck of the CPU, GPU or both? Would it be possible to 'sidestep' the difficulties and retain the art-style? I must say that I honestly didn't expect whatever technique being used to be that powerful.

I don't care.

I just wish Akuma had his Misogi still. That move was bs broken.

It comes down to GPU processing power ...

When I was in school, I did a research project on non-photorealistic rendering and in order to get the style we wanted we needed to create a simulation of (what we called) "Brush Strokes on textured paper" using pixel shaders on a Quadro GPU in 2003. The effect worked out really well but it took (roughly) 1 full second to render a pretty simple scene ... While GPU hardware has advanced a lot since 2003, I doubt you can do many advanced NPR techniques in game and something as nice as this trailer may need to wait until the next generation before it can be roughly approximated.

I'd prefer the intro look, it's georgous, and honestly, I don't really like SFIV style...