Soul Calibur XBLA Stripped of Mission Mode, Contradicts Namco Promise of No Major Subtractions

...and nothing of value was lost.

Seriously, this was the worst part of the game. Having to play through it to unlock all the goodies was the stupidest thing ever.

The no widescreen support and no online play are much, much bigger dealbreakers for me, and probably for a lot of others.

What did you guys expect? This is how business works today unfortunately. You lie, then tell people there are no refunds up front, then you make sure theres no support phone number so the customer has no chance of speaking to anyone (who wants to hear customers bitch anyways?), then you profit. Wait 6 to 8 months before releasing another XBLA game to give angry people a chance to forget about it...rinse and repeat.

it's extremely obvious that Namco released this only to whet people's appetites for SCIV. Hence giving you all the characters to play right away and not bothering to provide online gameplay- which is SCIV's major selling point.

I'm surprised people expected anything more than this- it would have only made sense if there was no SCIV in 3 weeks.

Lame, lame, lame.

I downloaded the trial version last night and it had other problems as well. The sound quality is terrible and no true widescreen support is a huge let down (top and bottom of my screen had dead space". The game itself plays just like I remembered and makes me even more excited for SC IV

My guess is that Namco decided that cutting the Mission Mode was the lesser evil, given that a percentage of gamers have already played through this mode on the Dreamcast and decided to unlock that content immediately.

I'm not saying they made the right decision here, as I still feel omitting MP over XBLA & not expanding the rendering view to support 16x9 was a lost sale already.

that pretty much means i'm not buying this. what a bunch of suck.

Rant time.

I was really looking forward to this one. Actually, I've been waiting years for it. All I can say to Namco is why bother? For MS is gets a little more involved but it is this, Hello, the future is knocking on your door and it is offering you "free" money. We paid a subscription fee just to get DLC for your system and we appear happy to deal with a licensing scheme that won't carry over to future systems. What are you waiting for, us to pay $0.25/minute just to turn the damn console on?

Honestly, did you give any real consideration to the size limit on XBLA games or was this just some middle-managers not-so-promotion-worthy decision? It is OK to have a demo that is over a gig but not a XBLA game? Whats the problem?

Isn't the end goal of DLC to take resellers like Gamestop out of the loop? You know, you make money every time someone buys the game, not just 1 in 5 times it is purchased in a store? Why shoot yourself in the foot with a small file size? Hell, wouldn't that be an incentive to make every game available via DLC?

Seriously, we are more than happy to give your our money. We'll buy bigger harddrives and break out our credit cards or run out to Wally World at 3AM to buy a point cards just to get what we want and show support for developers and games we care about. How about a break and actually give us what we pay for?

A few reviews released early this week mentioned this, which caused me to skip the purchase. I was already hesitant due to the lack of online play, but taking out Mission Mode and consequently unlocking everything from the get-go didn't give me anything to work for. Screw that.

Well that's a letdown. Mission mode was a lot of fun.

Must buy to not buy in 40 seconds.

Yeah, this was one of the reasons that I skipped it, but NO ONLINE PLAY was the major reason I passed.

"This game has everything the other version did....oh except for the entire mission mode."

Mission mode was the best part of the damn game :( Are the new weapons even still there?

wasn't mission mode just glorified arcade mode? and all it did was add lame cutscenes? i may be mistaken.

thank you for the warning Shacknews. i was going to buy this. but instead i'll just play my dreamcast version that has everything the game was supposed to have.

Wow, what a fucking disappointment. While Mission Mode could be tedious at times, I always enjoyed playing it way more than most of the shit that it unlocked. I was looking forward to going through it again, as it was worth $10 to not have to hook my Dreamcast back up when I got the itch to play with friends or alone.

This move, along with Soul Calibur 3 and 4 not being released in the arcades, tells me that Namco has really lost touch with the Soul Calibur fanbase. It seems like they pay attention for Tekken, a series I barely care about at all, yet screw over the Soul Calibur players.

Oh well, I'll just continue to give Capcom my money and just accept that Namco is moving in a different direction that what I would prefer.

No widescreen + no online mode killed it for me already :(

Wow, what a damn waste. Mission mode was what made this game so great upon its initial release--it helped push this game to a higher class past the rest of the fighters. What a shame to lie about it as well. At least I still have my Dreamcast.

This news post needs more :sad panda:

Reconsidering my forthcoming purchase now : (

I was wondering where it was.