AlietteFaye released an animation depicting the character usage stats for Street Fighter 6 over a full year. In the first nine months, Ken absolutely dominated in terms of his popularity.
However, Ed was quickly able to rise to the top and actually overtake Ken for a little bit. Some time afterwards, Ken was able to reclaim his position as the most popular character used in Street Fighter 6.
On the twelfth month, Akuma very quickly rose through the ranks, taking a considerable lead over Ken. Just as how it’s typically been throughout the Street Fighter series, the easy-to-play Shoto characters — Akuma, Ken, Ryu, and Luke — are seeing the most representation online.
Rohto|Tokido recently declared that he’ll be sticking with Ken instead of switching to Akuma in Street Fighter 6, so it will be interesting to see if other players using Akuma will return to other characters. Notably, Tokido was the player that first recognized Akuma’s potential in Street Fighter 5.
It’s certainly possible that we could see Ken overtake Akuma once again, similar to what happened with Ed. However, Akuma is more likely to hold his spot over Ken since Akuma proved to be a top contender throughout Street Fighter 5’s character stats as well.
Visualization of the overall character usage rates over the first year of Street Fighter 6! #SF6 #StreetFighter6 #スト6 pic.twitter.com/okHzgoVpJY
— AlietteFaye | Day -232 A.K.I. Main (@AlietteFaye) June 11, 2024
In terms of just looking at the graphic as it measures the Master ranked players, there are some similarities and differences. For one, Ken has typically dominated in the Master ranks as well.
There was actually a brief period of time in which Ryu was able to overtake Ken’s position before Ken reclaimed his spot. On the other hand, there have never been enough Master ranked Ed players to ascend past Ken.
Akuma has yet to become the most popular character among Master rank players, but he’s been quickly ascending to that spot. We’ll have to see if this momentum can be maintained considering that M. Bison is releasing later this month on June 26.
And here’s a visualization of the character usage rates only for Master Rank over the first year.#SF6 #StreetFighter6 #スト6 pic.twitter.com/pS1vPUtsJA
— AlietteFaye | Day -232 A.K.I. Main (@AlietteFaye) June 11, 2024