Invisible PS3 SSFIV costumes explained

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 4 January, 2011

MS covers new data costs. Sony doesn't.

In the PlayStation 3 version of stupendous fighting game Super Street Fighter IV you can't see downloaded alternate costumes worn by your opponent if you haven't downloaded them yourself. In the Xbox 360 version you can. Why?

According to Capcom, it's down to Sony, which doesn't cover the cost of making additional data available to users. Microsoft, on the other hand, does.

"The DLC for the newest costumes is additional data that must be put on your machines from the first-party networks (XBL and PSN)," community manager and fighting game legend Seth Killian wrote on Capcom's forum.

"When you add new data to an existing product, there are significant costs to do so charged by the first parties. On XBL, those costs were covered by Microsoft. As a result, the data is distributed to everyone, so even if you have not bought the new costumes, you can still see them if you're fighting against someone that has because you still received the new data required to display them.

"For Sony, those significant costs are not covered. As a result, you only get the new costume data when you actually buy the costumes. Those that don't buy the costumes can't see them, because the new costume data isn't present on your machine, and so you only see costumes you already have the data to represent."

Killian added: "The story is a bit more complicated because the costs of adding new data vary by region in some cases, and some additions are free, or free within a certain timeframe, etc., but the bottom line in this particular case is that Sony would [have] charged Capcom significant fees for distributing the new costume data to users that hadn't actually bought the DLC. Microsoft covered those costs, so the costume data is visible to all there.

"I wish it were the same all around, but hope this info helps."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (30) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • robthehermit #1 1 year ago

    MS don't exactly cover the cost, they charge for online gaming via live subs, Sony don't.

    Unless its all changed now and I haven't kept up with current(?) events.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #2 1 year ago

    If I understand correctly usually the 360 games get patched in order to get the new content. I don't think they are loaded live over the network (or are they?).

    Does that mean that developers actually have to pay for patches on the PSN? Or does Sony at least distuinguish between storage and bandwidth for patches and DLC?

  • sfp_noodle #3 1 year ago

    Ok that's stupid. When I played the original Street Fighter 4 on PS3, hundreds of people I fought with bought costume packs that I never did and I saw what they were wearing. This is a rather pathetic excuse from Capcom.

  • RodHull #4 1 year ago

    For me, this is the main reason why I believe Live is worth the extra £40 over PSN: seeing Chun Li in a nice new set of threads (although the article's title of "invisible costumes" awoke the sleeping pervert in me).

  • Quixz #5 1 year ago

    So paying for live GOLD has it's positives!
    Edited by Quixz at 04/01/11 @ 16:02

  • PixelPirate #6 1 year ago

    talk about penny pinching....

  • Dizzy #7 1 year ago

    "Does that mean that developers actually have to pay for patches on the PSN? Or does Sony at least distuinguish between storage and bandwidth for patches and DLC? "

    Yes... publishers have to pay Sony for bandwidth on PSN. On Live it is free for publishers (since Gold users pay for the network traffic).

    It is logical that Capcom doesn't want to pay this... since they would probably lose money on their SF DLC (since a lot of people would receive it without actually paying for it, even if they could not play it).
    Edited by Dizzy at 04/01/11 @ 16:04

  • Kayin #8 1 year ago

    SFP_Noodle - those costumes you mentioned were already on the disc, however. The data was available for viewing, you just had to pay for unlock keys to use them much the same as the first batch of new costumes for SSFIV.

    However, their latest batch of costumes (the 'Ultra' collection) aren't on the disc - you have to download about 150 mb of data off Live or PSN in order to see them when someone else is using them because they're not on your HD or game disc before then.

    I bought some for Cammy (she's ace) and for Cody (because his default jailbird costume is... not the best).
    Edited by Kayin at 04/01/11 @ 16:07

  • IonOnion #9 1 year ago

    So those who don't see the DLC costumes are those who don't want the customes anyway.
    Nothing lost, nothing gained except for the one showing off.

  • meanmrmustard #10 1 year ago

    So it seems to be: Being able to see content I deemed to be not worth my money enough to buy for myself Vs Being able to play online for free...... Hmmm tough one.

  • des #11 1 year ago

    Sony is cheap

  • sfp_noodle #12 1 year ago

    @Kayin

    Ah I didn't know that. Either way it's stupid. It affects the online experience, I mean c'mon, invisible costumes man! It's ridiculous. If Capcom is willing to charge extortionate prices for a bloody costume packs they can afford to pay a little towards making it functional from the massive profits they make. Surely a bandwidth charge is not going to affect them too much after the amount of money they will make off the packs?

    In all honesty it's expected of Capcom. They've become rip-off merchants this gen with all the on-disc DLC they've charged people for and the stupidly over-priced costume packs. I can understand a die-hard wanting to buy them all, but what happened to the days of doing something awesome to unlock something simple like that? I remember in Tekken 3 you had to play as Jin 50 times to unlock his school outfit. Felt rewarding. Simpler times :(

  • menage #13 1 year ago

    At 4 bucks a pack that's rather cheap Capcom

  • butler` #14 1 year ago

    And we're back in the 90s!

  • Colin8703 #15 1 year ago

    Surely it's to Capcom's benefit to do this as it could entice others to purchase the costumes for themselves?

  • ryandsimmons #16 1 year ago

    I'm confused.

    Why not just have the character deafault to the standard costume if the premium one is not loaded?

  • Kayin #17 1 year ago

    SFP_Noodle - I definitely agree, at least to a fair extent. Making games is extremely expensive these days though, and Capcom have to subsidise their less successful series' like Lost Planet 2 (which was awful) somehow.

    Problem is that the way they're doing it in SSFIV is difficult to justify. I'm not sure how much costumes cost to make, but I wouldn't expect that it would cost all that much for a few designers to lump together - I mean, look at the Dead or Alive series. Female characters in Doa 2 Ultimate had 20 costumes each. 20! While some of the later titles were on stricter schedules, they still managed to include at least seven a piece, all of which were presumably more time consuming to create than the SSFIV ones.

    In Capcom's defence, SSFIV is a great game that came out for around £20 - which in itself is a bargain. However, 1200 points really isn't worth it for just one alt costume for every character. 1200 points, or Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light / Limbo / Monday Night Combat / etc? That's not a tough choice for most people, not at all.

    Oh, okay. Cammy's alt 1 is tremendous. The rest can go jump.

  • lutas #18 1 year ago

    @ryandsimmons
    Was thinking the exact same thing. Surely the collision model is the same...

  • stanthaman #19 1 year ago

    funny, red dead redemption did it just fine :/

  • davisorle #20 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 20:44:35 16-04-2012

  • Katanax #21 1 year ago

    Personally, I don't mind at all.

    I've bought the game and I'm still having the same experience I paid for. Brilliant. If people want to buy and wear alt costumes, great, good for them.

    The balance is whether or not viewing the DLC costumes would impact on someone making an impulse purchase, letting them know there are alternatives and getting a preview of the content (which ultimately, is what you're receiving) and weighing up the potential revenue generation relative to the bandwidth cost for distribution across the entire SSFIV install base.

    If MS cover the cost as part of the Gold subscription, then great, you're getting additional functionality from a service you've paid for. With PSN being a free service, I wouldn't expect Sony or Capcom to use the bandwidth and issue a fairly substantial update which also takes up HDD space for features you may enjoy but you've a) not paid for and b) may not have any intention of paying for, especially with something that doesn't impact on the game mechanics one iota.

    Saying that however, adding the ability to download the update and view costumes used by others as a free option on PSN for PS Plus members would go a long way to bridging the gap between platforms, business models and service architecture and put premium subscribers (Both PSPlus and XBL gold) on a similar tier.

  • Acrid #22 1 year ago

    Who cares?

  • CaoSlayer #23 1 year ago

    I guess it was VERY hard to bundle the catalog with each custome pack so you could see every one if you bough just one.

  • FenderMaster #24 1 year ago

    @sfp_noodle

    Thats because in SFIV, all of the "DLC" was already on the disc, so new content doesn't need to be downloaded...

    In SSFIV the first 2 alternate costumes are already on the disc, so you can see them without buying them, whereas the newest costumes are actual genuine "DLC", and not just content already on the disc, locked out until you hand over your credit card...

    edit:

    whoops

    Kayin already explained it... and fair point about SSFIV being cheap, it was an absolute bargain, makes the unsavoury dlc practices easier to stomach
    Edited by FenderMaster at 04/01/11 @ 18:30

  • Der_tolle_Emil #25 1 year ago

    Surely it's to Capcom's benefit to do this as it could entice others to purchase the costumes for themselves?

    I think advertising would go the other way. Invisible ads never really do anything :)

  • DDevil #26 1 year ago

    I got a costume pack for free - am I still an idiot?

  • nasanu #27 1 year ago

    Bandwidth is dirt cheap, less than a hundred DLC purchases would pay for terrabytes of data. Capcom are being pricks.

  • oreillymj #28 1 year ago

    I think Namco had all the costumes for Tekken on the disc and the DLC cost just unlocked it. It meant that users that hadn't bought the costumes could still see them when fighting against users who had.

    Queue the inevitable shitstorm of abuse across the Internet against Namco.

    Now we see the result. you get the vanilla disc and have to buy and download the DLC costumes which could easily have been on the disk in the first place.

  • NeoKenzi #29 1 year ago

    Loving Astros comment! I was thinking that myself... Lol...

  • Phredreeke #30 1 year ago

    So either you play on PSN for free and don't see the extra costumes, or you pay to play on Xbox Live and see the costumes you didn't buy :p