Xbox 360 pirates and Super Street Fighter IV

I typed “Makoto” into YouTube and then set the filter to “upload date” as I wanted to see if there were any more videos on her. I didn’t really expect too much to be frank as it’s still pre-release and what no, but there’s hope. What I really didn’t expect to find were shoddy badly captured / edited videos that seemed to be taken in private. Again it’s pre-release, so these videos I really didn’t expect. But there’s quite a few of them. At the top of the list for today anyway was gegz59. The videos on his account, at the time of writing this (4/18/2010 10:03pm Sunday BST), have only been uploaded about an hour ago. So I’ve gotten curious as to how this is possible. My first idea was to check isohunt.com, so I did and tadah – SSF4 for 360 is available for download. I’ve then checked the source of the torrent and found that it doesn’t seem to be a hoax. I don’t even have a 360, so there’s no point in me going all illegal to downloading this and testing if it’s the real deal. I take it as real because of the videos on YouTube.

I think I recall that Capcom had a similar problem last year with the release of Street Fighter IV and the piracy on the 360 for that game. First and foremost I think it’s Microsoft that’s to blame for a console as easily modifiable as the Xbox 360. Yes we got the PSP on Sony’s end and the Wii as WELL as the DS on Nintendo’s end. But let’s face it, who gives a fuck about the PSP!? As for the Wii and the DS… really? We’re talking about devices here that have such huge install bases that it really doesn’t matter anymore, not even taking into account that the games that need to sell do sell (to a degree anyway). Or how do you explain the success of New Super Mario Bros. Wii?

Well I think that’s enough from me ranting about Xbox 360 pirates for now.