I may be dating myself here, but remember the Balrog's Las Vegas stage in the original Street Fighter II, and the seemingly countless Turbo, Super, and Hyper versions that followed? If you kept your eyes peeled to the background, you'd notice some gents watching the brawlers rather intently. There was one who'd always let loose with the tears, while another would celebrate anytime the match came to a close. This being Vegas, obviously they had a few bucks on the match. Well, if you're playing Super Street Fighter IV, you're about to get the chance to follow in these digital highroller's footsteps.
Capcom has partnered with Virgin Gaming, a subset of World Gaming that lets players wage bets on online matches, and are now allowing players to do just that with the developer's latest brawler. But before you can bask in the big bucks, first you have to register with the "bookie." Once you're signed up, place a challenge with someone else on Virgin Gaming. When the challenge is accepted, set up an Endless Battle lobby, invite your opponent, and start the match. The results are posted (though providing a screen cap or replay helps speed things along). From there, to the victor go the spoils with money transferred to the winner's account.
No words on what kind of odds Dan is getting...
With real money at hand, there are some obvious concerns about latency and overall fairness when it comes to matchmaking, but Virgin has a few measures to curb any unfair advantages: an automated skill rating system to help find and challenge similarly ranked players, and a user-rating system for any cheaters or cheap players.
The system is in its infancy, but it'll be interesting to see how well this will work out, and how it could impact the future of e-sports as a whole.
