Imagine a game of chess where you had to perform a double backflip with doing numerical integrations in order to move a piece on the board. Maybe untie a Gordian Knot to declare a Check. Paint the Sistene Chapel inorder to declare Checkmate.
See, there's a great game buried there, but I'm not going to waste that much time learning how the tools work in order to start playing the game. I've obscured a fantastic mind game with unecessary feats of dexterity that has little to do with the mind game people actually want to play.
Sadly, fighting game developers tend to slap more and more complex tools. They keep the most of the dedicated fans but scare away all newcomers. And the userbase rapidly shrinks. Every fighting game series has gone through this pattern. The only major exception is Smash Bros, but that's only 2 episodes long so far. *kicks Capcom for forcing sequelitis*
SF4 has suddenly become much more exciting to me. It sounds like Capcom will try to make it accessible to beginners. Good.
There is no such thing as a console war. This is the first step to game design.
