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God, I love Street Fighter V. I'm about as good at it as I am guitar – which is to say that I know the major chords, but you can stick your pentatonic scales up your arse – but, like performing a very average rendition of Wonderwall, I'm thoroughly enjoying exploring the basics of Capcom's latest. Cammy's spiral arrow has become a close friend against the dreaded dreadlocks of Necali; Ryu's shoryuken a simple special that even my blistered digits can just about perform. But there's a 'but' coming in this opening paragraph, and I just dropped it like the V-Triggers that all of my opponents seem to be able to predict.

I don't need to say why Street Fighter V's launch is a bummer because you already know. We gave the game a 9/10, and while I wished that we would have waited to see how the launch day servers fared, I fully back that score. This absolutely is a sublime game – it'll comfortably secure a spot in our top twenty PS4 games list, and may even, ahem, rise up it over time – but it's a game that probably shouldn't have released in its current guise. And the most frustrating thing is that, with a bit of foresight and expectation control, this whole thing could have been avoided.

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The reason for Street Fighter V's barebones launch is down to the Capcom Pro Tour. For those that don't follow the e-sports scene – and I don't in great detail – the new season kicks off towards the end of February. Considering that Street Fighter V is set to be the centre piece of this year's tournament, it was important to get a game out for people to practice on. And that's exactly what the publisher's done. The problem, of course, is that there are many, many, many Street Fighter fans who aren't pro players.

"The problem, of course, is that there are many, many, many Street Fighter fans who aren't pro players"

So while the scant offering of story prologues, survival, training, and the all-important online and offline versus may be more than enough for the likes of Daigo Umehara to train with, the rest of us have been left twiddling our thumbs. This was most apparent on launch day when the matchmaking was broken, leaving me desperate to play the game but with very little to actually play. So eager was I to enjoy the title that I ran through Survival mode as Cammy several times over. It's a fine mode, but it's not exactly how I imagined spending launch day.

But I feel like expectations are the underlying issue here, and there was a way that Capcom could have got this game out for tournament players – without ruining its reputation in the process. The obvious solution, of course, was a staggered roll out. The publisher could have launched the current game as Street Fighter V: Tournament Edition digitally for $30 or so. It then could have offered an upgrade path to the full game in, say, June – and deployed that alongside the "finished" retail release.

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This solves every problem: tournament players have a version of the game to train on, the barebones launch is reflected by a lower price, and casual players can wait for the full version later if they like. In fact, it's so glaringly obvious that I'm bummed Capcom's adopted the path that it has. Take a look at the Amazon reviews, where it's currently boasting a 2.5 star rating, with many customers describing it as rushed. It's the same story on Steam, Metacritic, and even on this site; the game's got a bad name because its publisher failed to manage expectations accordingly.

And this is the kind of thing that sticks. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Street Fighter V will be a more universally appealing game in a couple of months; take a look at the roadmap, and most of the features that people want are set to arrive as early as March. But this is a game that should have a Metascore of 90 plus. This is a game that we should all be going gaga over. This is a game that, at its core, is absolutely wonderful. Capcom, though, with a spate of bad business decisions has failed to rise up – in fact, I'd say that the publisher's f*cked up.

Do you agree with Sammy that Capcom's missteps have undermined what should be a genre-defining game? Was this situation easily avoidable? Are you enjoying the brawler regardless? Rise up in the comments section below.

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