Ultra Street Fighter IV: "A lot more characters are viable now"

With Ultra Street Fighter IV released digitally already, we tracked down Capcom's eSports Associate Director Matt Dahlgren to talk what the team's achieved with the update and how they're approaching the franchise's future.

"We didn't want to nerf characters across the board but strengthen the entire cast," he said about the rebalancing that's occurred across the whole roster. "At minimum, everything is mixed up now, there's a lot more characters now that are viable that weren't viable before for tournament play, so it should be a very exciting competitive season."

And the update's mainly down to the fighting community, who the studio turned to first in what Dahlgren calls their "most open development process" yet.

"As a company strategy we're opening up a lot more in how we handle our fighting games. USFIV is testament to that: this is the most open development process we've ever had. when we started we put out a poll and recieved over 30,000 responses in terms of what people wanted to see from the game. We took that as our base, then took it out to numerous location tests, had the pro players play it, give their feedback."

We also touched on the company's Pro Tour, which the director states will see a very hands-off approach by the company.

"Our goals for this one is not to come in and take the community over and own it, we're being really respectful of what our roots are. The fighting games scene was built by the players themselves; we want to keep that entrpeurnal spirit alive and encourage people to crate more tournaments."

Check out the full interview below.