After months of curiosity, speculation, and development issues, Capcom’s State of Play trailer for Street Fighter 6 has offered eager players plenty to get their teeth into. The graphics are impressive, with some sumptuous graffiti paint effects. Some new players got introduced both directly and indirectly, and the gameplay looks interesting. EX Moves are back, alongside what look to be SF3-esque Parries and SF4-style Focus Attacks. The trailer has sparked enough discussion for fighting game fans to get in on.
However, while it looks good now, there’s still a chance that things could go awry. Its predecessor, Street Fighter 5, is a fun game and is absolutely stacked with content both online and offline…in 2022. It was a different story back when it was released back in 2016. These are some mistakes Street Fighter 5 made that Capcom needs to learn from for Street Fighter 6’s launch.
5 Fanservice Designs
Fighting games are no stranger to sexualizing their characters. The DOA and Soulcalibur games are proof enough of that. Street Fighter 5, though, aimed to beat them at their own game with its new designs and camera angles. Originally, neither Laura nor Juri had black spandex under their pants and catsuit respectively. Cammy’s intro camera angle went between her legs instead of going to her side. Players could also actually see Rainbow Mika smack her butt before her Critical Art.
Except this clashed with their aims to get into E-sports. ESPN in particular said if things didn’t change, Street Fighter 5 matches wouldn’t get on TV. So, things changed. Many changes were for the best, while others were superfluous. R.Mika’s spank was the least questionable part of her Critical Art, and her default outfit was still too hot for TV. In the end, it was a quick fix that didn’t wind up pleasing anyone. It would be better for Street Fighter 6 to find a better balance.
4 Broken Online Mode
It’s not surprising when a new game’s online mode is rough on release. There’s going to be a lot of people crammed into a finite number of servers waiting to take each other on. Still, the best ones weather the storm and provide a good online experience. Mortal Kombat 11, Skullgirls, and even Garou: Mark of the Wolves have been commended for their use of GGPO and rollback netcode respectively. Street Fighter 5 was a different story. Its online mode was rough for a long time after launch.
Connecting online for a match would be difficult at the best of times, and if the game did connect, it would stutter badly. Some stages would tank the game’s speed even worse than others, like M.Bison’s Lair of the Four Kings. Then, for the cherry on top, it didn’t punish rage quitters. Street Fighter 5’s 24-hour ban & brands didn’t come into practice until much later in its lifespan. Granted, if the game had that system at launch, the spotty connection would’ve punished the innocent more than the guilty.
3 Microtransactions
To its credit, Street Fighter 5 tried to avoid the pitfalls previous projects fell into by offering players a way to get extra content without needing their credit cards. If they played the game long enough across its different modes, they could earn in-game cash called "fight money." If players saved up enough FM, they could use it to buy new background, costumes, and even DLC characters.
Still, this was still less convenient than just unlocking this type of content like in the olden days. The FM prices also required a lot of play time. Online matches on average paid 50 FM per match, and DLC characters cost 100,000 FM each. At least the Offline modes provided a heftier chunk of change, until the Arcade Edition release shut that option down. Even the most avid online player would end up stuck when other bits of content could only be bought with 'Zenny', and 'Zenny' could only be earned by coughing up real cash. In the end, it was no better than buying Season Passes.
2 $60 Price Tag For $6's Worth of Content
Fans would have been starving for that extra content as well, as Street Fighter 5 was shockingly bare bones on release. There was no Arcade Mode, Survival Mode, or really any other mode beyond Story, Local and Online play. Even then, the Story Mode was anemic. Each character had a chapter consisting of 2-4 fights, with poorly drawn single-art cutscenes in between. It’s not every day that a mode causes controversy because its art made one of its black characters look like a white redhead.
That’s not to mention the game came out with a base roster of 16 characters. That sounds fine enough, except it was much smaller than its competition. Tekken 7 had 36 characters at launch. King of Fighters XIV had 50. Even older Street Fighter games, like Super Street Fighter 2 and its 20-person roster, had more to offer. As a result, Street Fighter 5 is one of the few games with more DLC characters than free ones. If the leaked concept art is anything to go by, it thankfully seems like Street Fighter 6 will sidestep this issue and have a solid starting lineup — as long as they don’t make the next mistake.
1 Rush It Out!
Much of Street Fighter 5’s launch issues were due to rushing the game out to make the deadline. Features that would have been included at the start, like the Arcade Mode and extra characters, were held off to be added as updates or DLC later on. The cinematic story mode, A Shadow Falls, had appearances from Guile, Balrog, Juri and Urien way before they would become part of the game’s first DLC season.
Capcom even admitted that the game was unfinished after it was released and apologized for the state it was in. By that point, that fact had become quite obvious. If Street Fighter 6 wants to make a better first impression, it’ll need all its modes and characters ready at release. Turning those hinted characters in the trailer, like Marisa and Kimberly, into DLC would just bring back bad memories of its frustrating predecessor.