This article here said the arcade version of Street Fighter 4 was made unbalanced on purpose, as opposed to the home version which focused on balanced:

http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/84242/street-fighter-ae-not-set-for-home-consoles-purposely-unbalanced/

I am curious why a home version would need to focus on being balanced.  Anyone able to explain this?

I think the smash bros. series creator really tried hard to make it balanced, but any facet of society has a status quo by which people just naturally adapt better to certain elements over others.

People are just naturally socialized to these kinds of things and it shows very well when you look at the teir lists for the smash series.  If you are a genius you can master any character.  If you're just an average hard core gamer who plays a lot, then you're going to naturally be good with only a certain style of character, most likely the same ones everyone else is good at.

I mention this because there is no need to try and unbalance a arcade brawl fighter like street fighter, it will naturally unbalance itself due to gamers being similar.  I know everyone thinks they are unique and can excel in whatever way they want, but more or less most people are the same on a general level.

Simple, due to having online play...

If you'd played SFIV online and seen that EVERYONE uses Sagat then you'd see the problem :) (It puts off newcomers and people who want to "enjoy" the game and not just win).

In an Arcadeplaying locally, there aren't as many expertsserious players so you can still enjoy the game if it's not balanced etc because you have to know a thing or two to make use of the imbalance in the first place.