Reply To: The Official SUPER Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition Thread

Took a while to track this one down for you while everyone was on holiday, but here’s the gist of it:

The DLC for the newest costumes is additional data that must be put on your machines from the first-party networks (XBL and PSN). When you add new data to an existing product, there are significant costs to do so charged by the first parties. On XBL, those costs were covered by Microsoft. As a result, the data is distributed to everyone, so even if you have not bought the new costumes, you can still see them if you’re fighting against someone that has because you still received the new data required to display them.

For Sony, those significant costs are not covered. As a result, you only get the new costume data when you actually buy the costumes. Those that don’t buy the costumes can’t see them, because the new costume data isn’t present on your machine, and so you only see costumes you already have the data to represent.

The story is a bit more complicated because the costs of adding new data vary by region in some cases, and some additions are free, or free within a certain timeframe, etc., but the bottom line in this particular case is that Sony would charged Capcom significant fees for distributing the new costume data to users that hadn’t actually bought the DLC. Microsoft covered those costs, so the costume data is visible to all there. I wish it were the same all around, but hope this info helps.