"It's...Persona, but it's not Guilty Gear. The expectation is that when GGACXX gets re-released on current-gen consoles, everyone who's serious about fighting games will switch over to it and leave P4A to the fanboys, fangirls, weeaboos and people like my friend who bought it only for the word "PERSONA" on the box. They think the hype is only recent, everyone found it a bit gimmicky, but said it had relatively solid mechanics. Even the guy who brought it admitted that he was just waiting for GGACXX to re-release."
My personal fanboyism for the recent Persona games aside, something about similar views irks me. Not going to try and put words in people's mouths, since not everything I say draws directly from this quote, but it drew lines to points that I've been thinking about.
For one, there's the implication that the hype for P4A rides on the popularity of the Persona 3 and 4 games, and once that dies down, the crowd will thin out and give way to the Guilty Gear/Blazblue 3 crowd. The fundamental problem with that is the precedence of other competitive games that draws a crowd from similar fanboys/fangirls that still receive hype. The Super Smash Bros. series drawing on Nintendo fans is a prime example, and there's no way Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 (or just about any game in the Versus series) doesn't attempt to appeal to its respective fandoms. If these games can have strong, active scenes after the initial draw has (likely) passed, then it doesn't fit that P4A wouldn't be able to retain a scene solely because its initial hype will have passed in the same manner. Hell, there are people who aren't even familiar with Persona and are playing the game because they've heard it's solid. That's pretty much similar to someone getting into Guilty Gear for the first time, honestly, or any other game that doesn't have a pre-established character/theme base to draw interest from (like Skullgirls).
Second, and an issue I've been conflicting with for a while, is the comparison of certain games to the point that people theorize that X game will replace Y game when it's released. When Blazblue: Calamity Trigger was released, it and its succeeding, updated versions essentially replaced the last version of Guilty Gear in most tournaments. When MvC3 came out, Tatsunoko vs Capcom was tossed aside. Now, what DOESN'T bother me is the actual replacement of the games on the main tournament lists. Events can only host so many games in the interest of time, money and resources, after all. What bothers me is the thought process in that certain games are SUPPOSED to be replaced, as though the newer game (before it's even released) was naturally supposed to replace the older one. It makes sense for something like the transition from Street Fighter III: Third Strike to Street Fighter IV, which, while they are two separate games, are sequential titles in the same series. But I was actually confused to hear what people thought about TvC being dropped for MvC3. These were definitely not the same game. While some general mechanics were shared, there was enough variation between the two that they could co-exist, y'know, like how MvC2 and TvC were able to run alongside each other at EVO 2010. From that alone, it'd make more sense just to say "Oh, MvC3 will replace MvC2, naturally," and leave TvC out of the conversation altogether. I believe there were some other circumstances that removed TvC from the main stages, but hopefully my point is there, in regard to speculation. Just like I don't believe Blazblue should be outright replaced by P4A, I don't believe the new Guilty Gear should replace P4A when it comes out. Regardless of apparent similarities and the fact that all three games were developed by Arc System Works, each game is unique enough that they should be able to stand on their own merit. If one is necessarily to overtake the other for a regular game slot at events, it shouldn't be solely on the basis that it's the most recent game in the market (with sequential titles in a single series being the exception) or by which game is more "serious" than another, but by dedication of their respective scenes to keep the game active. Not the best example, since these are sequential to each other, but why, in part, do you think both Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Melee can both have active scenes at the same time?
All that said, how does a tournament host decide which games to implement into its lineup? Popularity is the obvious answer. I've said a lot of shit about how games should stand on their own merit, implying that similar games can coexist in the same tournament, but if there are too many games to choose from and not enough time to accommodate them, then something has to go and, unfortunately, the current anime fighters draw too many parallels to each other to not start pulling weeds from there first. For these games, I believe one of them will end up more pulling significantly more tournament entrants than the others (personally hoping that P4A comes out/stays on top) and solidify a frequent spot in the forthcoming tournament seasons. If the Guilty Gear crowd has the strength to pull it off, more power to the players (disclaimer: this doesn't mean I won't play myself), but all the talk of transitioning to/replacing games before a significant amount of results can be accumulated from the games in question is unwarranted and doesn't have a sound base to stand on.
I believe that's all I had on my mind. If there were some other points about the matter I'd forgotten while typing this (I feel like there were), I'll make an edit. If there are parts you feel the need to contest against, comment about it. In the meantime, don't sleep on current games, just because you retain more anticipation for a newer, similar game coming out.
