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IMO tho sticks do have a slight advantage. When it comes to pads it is hard to get something that is custom to your tastes where on a stick you can customize all the parts to cater to your preferences. American or Japanese stick? Square or octo gate? American or Japanese buttons? Bat top or ball top? With the newer Mad Catz and Hori sticks they make it easier to swap out and replace these parts. With pads doing mods or replacing parts can be more of a hassle and often lead to you just needing to buy a completely new pad which really sucks if you spent the time to break it in or if its a pad no longer in production (like the PS1 Dual Shock Version 1 pad I prefer using).
@ Johnathan: I'm going to have to disagree with you on the matter of that newer fighting games are not designed for sticks. Most of the fighting games coming out now on consoles all started out in the arcade or are based off a previous arcade control layout. The move shortcuts in SF4 are there more make it easier for new players and the fact that many of the arcade sticks being released all use square gates by default which many players seem to have a problem doing 623 motions on."
I will say that GF's 'keep it' option does have some good deals. I just wish they allowed the $5 coupons to roll over."
I will be at Evo. Depending on what pool placement I get, I may see you there. I signed up for SSF4, MBAA, and T6. Good luck!"
In each genre no matter what map or character you're playing you always have a set of constant fundamentals. In an FPS its movement, aiming, weapons, etc. In a fighting game its things like blocking, throwing, dashing, jumping, etc. Beyond this is where the specifics of characters and maps come into play. If you're playing Halo 3 for example, you need to learn the spawn points (weapons & characters), base placement, sniping spots, cover, etc for each map you play on. The same thing goes for a new character in a fighting game. You have to learn their move set, normals, combos, match ups, etc. Sure if you don't have the DLC you are missing out on the experience other players that do are getting, but if anything I would give the fighting game genre an edge here since some games allow you to at least play another person online that is using a DLC character that you don't have so you can at least learn how to fight against that character. In most FPS games, you would noramally get kicked out of a game using a DLC map if you don't have it.
Sure I understand the issues that missing characters/maps when running tournaments can cause (experienced them lately myself) and people feeling pissed that they have to pay more for characters they feel should be part of a full retail release, but I think there is more good happening here if you look beyond that. Back in the day I never heard anyone complain about having to pony up 50 bucks to buy SF2 Turbo on the SNES just for the ability to play as 4 characters that were already in the original and turbo modes. Now you got the option to add what content you want and the prices for most of them are pretty fair. The content itself doesn't change any of the preexisting chracters so you can still play the game you already did if you felt the need. The only real negative that I see about DLC characters is that they tend to not get the same extensive balancing and tweaking that characters in the retail release get. Although these things tend to get updated with later patches anyways."