Street Fighter 6 is gearing up to release its next DLC fighter, Ed. Next week, players everywhere will be able to get their hands on the Street Fighter 5 representative, taking him into battle with his Psycho-powered boxing abilities.
While fans are excited to play Ed, there’s a big thirst for information on the DLC character that is slated to follow after him — which we all know is Akuma. During the Fan Fest 2024 live broadcast, IGN asked Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama and Producer Shuhei Matsumoto if they could say anything about Akuma at this point in time, and they did provide some very light details on the upcoming legacy fighter.
IGN went ahead and asked a question that many fans have on their minds right now. Knowing the developers probably couldn’t say much about it right now, the interviewer asked Nakayama and Matsumoto if they could tell us anything about how Akuma plays in Street Fighter 6.
Through translation, Matsumoto responded and gave us about as much as he could at this point in time.
“Yeah, obviously there’s not a lot of information that we can provide here right now, but we’re all very excited for you guys to see him,” started Matsumoto. “He’s awesome looking, and [he has] lots of great effects.
“We’re going to be carefully planning out how we present this character to you guys. So, we can’t wait to show you this new character,” Matsumoto concluded.
Naturally, that’s not a ton of significant information there, but it is something when we had nothing previously. What is interesting, though, is Matsumoto’s comment about “carefully planning out” how they reveal Akuma.
Ed has been a major talking point for Street Fighter 6 recently for a variety of reasons, one of which being the way his gameplay was unveiled. As some in the community put it, Ed was revealed “on a random Thursday,” and with Capcom Cup X just around the corner, it was odd to see that the major announcement wasn’t held for the event instead.
In addition to that, fans also thought we might be seeing a little bit of a two-fer at Capcom Cup X with Akuma also potentially being show for the conclusion of the giant event. However, Capcom has also already shut any hopes of that down by saying ahead of Capcom Cup X that there will be no major announcements regarding Street Fighter 6 made at the event.
With the weight that Akuma carries within the Street Fighter series and his popularity, we can only hope that Capcom’s careful planning of Akuma’s reveal includes something with a bit more oomph than what we saw for Ed.
We’ll be seeing Ed officially released into the Street Fighter 6 landscape on February 27. Akuma, on the other hand, is expected to release sometime this Spring.