For those of you who care (or even for those of you who don’t) Capcom today announced its eagerly anticipated Championship Update for Street Fighter IV for both Xbox 360 and PS3. The update will go live on 24th April and will work a little something like this:

Effectively the update provides for tournament play online and a new ranking system to replace the current, rather broken one. Essentially tournaments will be broken up into 5 separate levels based on skill. You score GP (Grade Points) for any wins within a tournament and as your GP increases over time you become eligible to enter into more exclusive and higher skilled tournaments.

For winning a tournament you will be awarded CP (Championship Points) which are essentially prize money based on the GP of the players participating in the tournament. In addition character selection will be double-blind meaning you will not be able to see which character your opponent has selected until you have both made your decision – A nice touch I think. Each tier of tournaments will provide different bonuses and or penalties for win and losses, only the top two tiers penalising players for a first round exit.

Further to the addition of tournament play is the ability to view and save replays from the top 5000 fighters in the word. This will work differently on both the PS3 and 360. On the PS3 replays will be viewable and can be rated whereas on the 360 the replays cant be rated but can be saved providing the ability to turn on input display so you can figure out how Daigo pulled off ‘that’ move.

All in all it would appear to be a well needed and extensive update for those of us who enjoy a little friendly virtual battering every now and then. My apologies for the lack of posts over the past few days. Coupled with a relatively sparse amount of geek news to report upon I have been exceptionally busy with work. I hope to resume full service in the coming week.