Capcom had apparently advertised Street Fighter IV as an accessible fighter, even to those who are new to the fighting genre.  Upon hearing of this, Arc System Works' Toshimichi Mori, designer for the company's 2D fighter BlazBlue, nearly had an aneurysm.

Mori expresses his disbelief in an interview, following a discussion over the simplicity of fighters put out by Arc.  He goes on to explain his fervent skepticism over Capcom's claims:

"I'm not trying to pick a fight with Capcom or anything, but with Street Fighter IV, they made a big deal about how the game was designed to be accessible to people new to the genre.

I remember when I first read that in an interview, I was like, 'What? How can they say that?!' I thought maybe I was seeing things. I think they need to take a second look at the list of moves for that game before they make a claim like that.

Sure, people like us who work with games, or fans of fighting games can do a hadouken or a shoryuken without thinking much about it, but for somebody just getting started? Those moves are pretty tough! You can't expect new players to just whip those moves out every time.

To fill your game with moves like that and then emphasize how simple it was for beginners to pick up seemed irresponsible to me. Street Fighter IV is not a game geared toward people who've never played fighters before. If they were really interested in making a beginner-friendly game, they should've made included a few impressive moves a player could do with the press of a button."

An exceptionally valid point I had never considered myself as a gamer.  It seems that the gaming industry has been slowly crawling after Nintendo, attempting to draw in a broader audience by whatever means necessary.  Yet my personal experience with Street Fighter IV at E3 showed me that someone who hasn't touched the series since the early 90s -- a PC port, no less -- has no chance against a player who does keep up.  Of course, veteran gamers who live and breathe the fighter genre could easily brush aside a newbie's discomfort as a necessary part of learning the ropes.

Another interesting and somewhat disappointing tidbit is Daisuke Ishiwatari's dwindling involvement in the very franchise he fathered.  While Arc System Works created the Guilty Gear series, Sega officially owns it, and Arc no longer works directly on updates.  Ishiwatari admits that the original team was "involved directly with the series up through Guilty Gear XX #Reload."

Yet the two companies are not completely seperate.  Arc had a hand in developing the recent Guilty Gear action title, Guilty Gear 2: Overture, despite its obvious departure from the series.  Ishiwatari wouldn't say much but quietly confirmed rumors of Sega's ownership over the franchise's IP.

Still, the company is proud of their games and are intent on bringing more quality titles to the table, such as Battle Fantasia and BlazBlue.