Believe it or not, it was a full eight years ago (as of February 16th) that you were confusedly going through the then-brand new Street Fighter 5’s various modes, wondering where the rest of the experience was while swearing you were pressing buttons earlier than the game seemed to think you were.
Indeed Street Fighter 5’s launch was not a time Capcom likely remembers with much fondness, but the AAA development company has come forward for the game’s eighth birthday with a direct apology about what initially went down.
“Street Fighter 5 has celebrated its 8th anniversary since its release,” starts the post on X. “From the beginning to the middle of the release, there were network issues, lack of content, etc… We are truly sorry for the content that did not meet the expectations of many of you.”
Capcom has expressed a sense of lamentation about SF5 in the past, but perhaps never this directly as they call out the specific shortcomings that led to player grievances.
“From the middle to the end of the game, the Street Fighter 5 development team did a lot of self-reflection and worked hard to resolve the issues as much as possible. In the end, there were 45 playable characters, and the battle system was able to add V Skills/Trigger 2, V-Shift, etc,” they go on.
Indeed once developers appeared to be relatively caught up from being apparently behind in schedule, (many of the game’s foundational modes were still unavailable at launch) they did begin attending to mechanical and balance problems. This saw SF5 grow in notable steps toward being a better experience, which arguably grew in positive ways up until the inclusion of Luke, the game’s final and clearly overpowered DLC character.
“Thanks to you, the number of players playing Street Fighter 5 has increased significantly since Season 4. I still remember how happy I was. Even now, hundreds of thousands of people are playing Street Fighter 5. I’m really happy about this too! Above all, the most important point was that I was able to apply this reflection to Strike 6,” continues the post, which lacks a signature but may have been penned by SF6 Director Takayuki Nakayama.
“I once again feel that the past eight years have been spent together with everyone. Thank you very much!”
The truth of the matter is, while the potholes Capcom stepped in surely hurt the Street Fighter franchise deeply, they didn’t do enough damage to fully alienate much of the fan base. What’s more, it’s abundantly clear that developers paid close attention to past mistakes and rectified them in spectacular fashion through their hard work in Street Fighter 6.
Indeed, we’re still only in the vanilla (initial) version of the game and already it’s a more balanced Street Fighter entry than arguably any other (including non-vanilla versions) to date.
We look forward to Street Fighter 6’s one year anniversary, though perhaps the following information will come sooner, with bated breath as many are anxious to see what kinds of balance changes will be rolling in and how much they’ll affect the great but admittedly not perfect gameplay.
You can view the original post in Japanese here:
ストVが発売から8周年を迎えました
リリース序盤〜中盤にかけてネットワークの問題やコンテンツ不足など…多くのみなさまの期待を裏切る内容で本当に申し訳ありませんでした。
多くの反省をし、問題を出来るだけ解決すべく中盤〜終盤、ストV開発チームは全力で取り組みました。… https://t.co/iqDHB7sGL4
— ストリートファイター / STREET FIGHTER (@StreetFighterJA) February 18, 2024