SF IV ‘Power Up Pack’ exists because of ‘technical reasons’

Capcom’s Street Fighter IV “Championship Mode” update was slated to hit Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network on April 24. Capcom delivered the goods as expected.

I was in the office the Monday morning after, so I decided to toss out a minor PSA about the DLC hitting both consoles. It didn’t go so well. I encountered a small problem that morning: I could only confirm that the Xbox 360 version of the content had hit, and oddly enough, the update had turned into a full on Marketplace download dubbed the “Power Up Pack.” Ultimately, I was wrong in my assumption that the PS3 version of the update would be fashioned in the same way — it was released as a simple, automatic patch.

What gives? Why the “Power Up Pack” instead of a title update? According to Capcom’s Seth Killian, the Xbox 360 “Power Up Pack” download was the result of a technical issue.

“’Power Up Pack’ is a red herring in this case,” Killian told me via e-mail. “It’s just a part of the regularly scheduled ‘Championship Mode’ title update you already know about.“

“On XBL, for technical reasons, the update was too big to be automatic, so once you begin the game, you are asked to download the “Power Up Pack” (not sure where that term came from) to get Championship Mode installed,” he continued. “On PSN, the entire ‘Championship Mode’ update just happens automatically, so you never get a request to download anything called ‘Power Up Pack.’”  

So, that’s that. No extra or “special” content; it was just a workaround. An interesting and confusing one at the time.