It's not a particularly big surprise to see that Capcom's recently announced Street Fighter 6 is generating plenty of excitement between genre aficionados. The game looks to be a significant step up from its predecessor, judging by the available pre-release footage, and some announced features could be real game-changers for the series, such as its open-world exploration features.However, the excitement doesn't stop there. Sources are now claiming that Street Fighter 6 has two of the most commonly-requested features in this niche: cross-platform multiplayer and rollback netcode. This information comes from Maximilian Dood and Tamoor Hussain, both of whom seem to have talked to Capcom about it.Capcom is clearly interested in making some big strides with the Street Fighter IP, as shown by Street Fighter 6's new "Drive" system, the open-world exploration, and a variety of other items. At the same time, both Dood and Hussain have now confirmed that Capcom is also looking into the game's underlying technology. This will, then, lead to the introduction of a full and comprehensive crossplay feature, allowing players to match with one another no matter the platform they're playing on.
When it comes to explaining rollback netcode in practice, it's a way of dealing with excessive latency in fighting games. In broad, simple terms, rollback netcode allows the game to alleviate latency concerns by "predicting" what the opponent might do next, to deliver a substantially improved gameplay experience to everyone involved. The feature is widely regarded as a must-have for modern fighting games, and the fact that Capcom is opting into it, too, is good news for the fighting game community.
Overall, most of the news coming out about SF6 implies that Capcom has got a firm grasp of what it wants to do with the franchise. On top of interesting mechanical novelties, player expression is getting major improvements as well, with features such as Street Fighter 6's "Game Face" opening up all the characters' visual flexibility than was present ever before.
Of course, it may also be worth pointing out that much of the currently available information about Capcom's new Street Fighter had previously been leaked. In fact, Capcom acknowledged the Street Fighter 6 leaks and thanked its community for all the positive reactions and support. To that end, the community now has a decidedly positive view of the game, and this is set to continue being the case if Capcom successfully delivers on all of its promises.
Street Fighter 6 releases in 2023 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
