Gamertell

This will probably be a huge shock to everyone: Capcom announced last Friday (February 22, 2008) that Street Fighter IV will indeed hit American arcades, much as it’s been confirmed for Japan this summer.

But now, all sarcasm aside, even with the famed Street Fighter moniker, Capcom has informed Kotaku that it’s having troubles finding a distributor on this side of the Pacific that’s willing to take the title.

The reasoning is a glaring testament to how barren American arcades really are in this day and age: most arcade machine distributors in the United States are used to handling only ticket redemption games.  Look out, Toto.  We’re not in 1991 anymore, or even 1997 for that matter.

With that, some arcade owners are circumventing that trouble by importing the Japanese version, but that does little to make this news less than troubling, particularly with no firm release window on the home versions yet.  It looks like Capcom has its work cut out for them if they want to revive the old-school arcade culture.

Read [Gamertell]  Also Read [Kotaku]