Daigo Umehara! Or just simply Daigo... or 'The Beast,' whichever you prefer.

After what sounds like a rigorous elimination process over a period of months, sixteen competitors were chosen to play at the GameStop Street Fighter IV National Tournament, held at the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion in San Francisco over the weekend (Saturday, April 18th).
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Capcom has heard your outcrys and will release the Street Fighter IV Championship DLC for free on April 24th. The DLC will have a balanced tournement mode as well as console specifics replay mode features.
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Capcom is bringing new options to Street Fighter IV with an eye towards serious players. Street Fighter IV's Championship Mode update expands on the fighting fun by offering players the chance to compete in tournaments and to watch replays of the best tournament matches. Best of all it comes to you at no cost.
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Following up on an announcement made last week at the Street Fighter IV official blog, Capcom shared final details today on a major update for the fighter. Set for April 24, the fully free update adds new shared and console-specific features to the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game.
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Some of you might be tired of playing the same online matches over and over, well fear not because, you can go back to a time gone by and play some Pong in Street Fighter IV. You just play as Rose and use her energy ball and play a round of Pong.
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When the dust settles on the American Street Fighter tournament, the winners will be off to the world champs in Vegas. Where they'll face off against these guys.

Chung-gon Lee (Korea)
The Korean champ. Would kick your ass.

Tatsunori Kajimoto (Japan)
The Japanese champ. Would also kick your ass.

Daigo Umehara (Japan)
Probably the best Street Fighter player of all time. Would kick anything you put in front of him.
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Capcom updated the official Street Fighter IV blog today with notice of an upcoming announcement for the game. April 17 will see the announcement of the time period for something related to the game. Yes, this is an announcement about an announcement, but it appears to be either related to the PC version of the game or an upcoming update.
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Capcom's teamed up with Gamestop to bring the fight against hunger to the Street Fighter IV National Championship.
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That's right folks, the WCG has just opened online registrations for their first ever WCG Fighter Club which will include Street Fighter IV, Dead or Alive 4, Soul Caliber IV and more.
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OXCGN:

"It was officially the first SF IV tournament for the Australian games media. But what started as a casual drinking and gaming PR night, quickly became a hell of a lot more serious as everyone revealed their inner World Warrior when THQ revealed some serious loot for the cream of the Aussie gaming media...

THQ and Mango had turned Sun Studios into a World Warrior's wet dream. Street Fighter paraphernalia plastered on the walls, a cute cosplaying Chun Li, anime playing on one wall, SFIV on another at about 10ft high. Even the biggest fan of Ken had to admit at that size, he is most definitely on steroids."

Full report after the jump:
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Kotaku writes:

A $300 tournament edition fightstick on the gray market? Screw that. Reader Rotundo made one for himself and another for his friends out of $40 in spare parts and two shoeboxes. Oh, and one's wireless.

He picked up a couple of Happ joysticks and 14 buttons for $35, then set about taking apart some Xbox controllers to wire the sucker up. Most people make their homebrew sticks out of wood, but Rotundo had neither "spare wood" nor "any decent tools to cut said wood." Looking around, he settled on two Nike shoeboxes, which he says can take a beating.
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The Jace Hall Show is back for a second season and today you can catch up with Episode 2, which just went live. Show host Jace attends Capcom's Street Fighter IV launch party, discovers that game pads aren't the best for fighting games, and pays a visit to Arcade-in-a-Box for a custom designed arcade stick.
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GameSpot writes: "More than a decade passed between the arcade release of Street Fighter III and February's debut of Street Fighter IV. Over that span, the 2D fighting genre that the Street Fighter franchise defined in the '90s fell by the wayside, a niche within a niche kept alive by a handful of companies. So when Capcom announced that it was returning to the Street Fighter franchise for a fourth full installment--and that the series would jump into the world of 3D--there was an understandable amount of concern among fans."
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Retailer Amazon.com this week price cut Capcom Co.'s Street Fighter IV for Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 to under $54 in a new round of game discounts.

This week, Street Fighter IV held a sale price of $53.99, down from the $59.99 MSRP.
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A posting at the Street Fighter IV official blog reveals that the game's Championship Mode update is almost ready to go. The update will also include a second mode that has something to do with replays.
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In the latest issues of Famitsu, they reported survey results of gamers' satisfaction levels on recent releases and consoles. There were five possible responses to each game/console: very satisfied, satisfied, indifferent, unsatisfied and very unsatisfied. Each game and console is then assigned a satisfaction score out of 5 accordingly.

Here are the results (arranged in descending order in terms of satisfaction score):

Games:

Demon's Souls (PS3): 4.7/5, Very Satisfied: 82.4%
Yakuza 3 (PS3): 4.6/5, Very Satisfied: 66.6%
Street Fighter IV (PS3,360): 4.2/5, Very Satisfied: 41.4%
Star Ocean IV (360): 4.0/5, Very Satisfied: 37.6%

Consoles
360: 4.2/5, Very Satisfied: 23.8%
PSP: 3.8/5, Very Satisfied: 17.1%
PS3: 3.6/5, Very Satisfied: 16.6%
NDS: 3.4/5, Very Satisfied: 19.1%
Wii: 3.2/5, Very Satisfied: 8.2%
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Ve3tro writes: "The Classic Costume Pack for Street Fighter IV is now available for download from XBLA Marketplace. The pack contains new costumes for characters Guile, Blanka, Dhalsim, Gen and Fei Long.

PS3 fans will be able to download the costume pack next Thursday, March 26th.

The packs will cost 320 MPs and £3.99 respectively."
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Leigh Alexander from Gamasutra writes:

"Microsoft is celebrating a 53 percent year-over-year spike in Xbox 360 sales following the release of February's NPD results, which saw sales of the console hit 391,000 units.

The company says Xbox 360's "record-setting" sales pace is largely due to its lower price and value proposition, plus its software library. Comparing Metacritic scores, the company says 135 Xbox 360 games score 80 or higher, versus 94 for rival PlayStation 3."
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Capcom has revealed that a new shipment of the specialty controllers and arcade sticks for Street Fighter IV will be available soon, some coming as soon as the end of this month and the end of April.
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BeefJack writes, "Soon after Street Fighter IV's release reports came in that arcade sticks were virtually sold out all over the country including sticks specifically created for the game and other brands not specifically marketed for the game...

This lack of arcade sticks may in fact be the reason why Street Fighter IV hasn't sold more copies..."
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