Half of the second batch of DLC characters for Street Fighter 6 have made it to the roster and we know that Mai Shiranui and Elena are en route next, but this game looks to have a reasonably long life ahead of it and, if its predecessors are any indication, will like likely garner around 20 more characters by the time all is said and done.
It’s with that future potential in mind that we turn to SF6 Director Takayuki Nakayama and Producer Shuhei Matsumoto as they sat down for a recent interview with Gamerbraves and, during which, highlighted two key factors that go into character selection.
The interview was conducted through a Capcom translator named Jessica, who graciously communicated both Nakayama and Matsumoto’s responses to Gamerbraves. When the latter asked about the compass the team at Capcom uses to select which new characters will be brought in as DLC, two main factors came up: popularity and game mechanics.
“Whether or not they’re popular they also consider that as a factor,” started Capcom’s response. “And game mechanics, because each character can be finely tuned in the newest iteration to match the balance that’s needed for the entire game, it’s probably, when comparing the two, the character is actually more prioritized than the game mechanics,” said Jessica.
“So when you’re comparing the two, the character or the game mechanics they do tend to prioritize the character. Whether it makes sense for the character to come back in this iteration timeline wise and also background wise,” she finished.
This struck us as interesting since the community (we included) have often supposed that certain Street Fighter legacy figures would or would not lend themselves all that nicely to the mechanic-defined atmosphere of a particular game.
Makoto and Dudley, two fan favorites we haven’t seen since Street Fighter 4, for instance, both tend to rely heavily on forward momentum as many of their maneuvers are advancing in nature and lend themselves to an “overwhelm your opponent with unrelenting offense” game plan.
When considering how these characters might have fared back during Street Fighter 5’s continued development, it was easy to come to the conclusion that SF5’s offense and dash-heavy nature might be a little too accommodating for such characters, and thus that might be the reason Capcom skipped both figures during that game.
Despite some conspicuous overlap, Street Fighter 6’s Drive System is quite different than SF5’s V-System, and one might imagine it’d make for a more versatile fit for the likes of characters such as Makoto and Dudley. In any case, Capcom has clarified this factor isn’t as important as we may have thought.
Capcom conducted a popularity poll earlier this year for the entire Street Fighter roster, and when the smoke cleared both Makoto and Dudley were in the top 15. Makoto placed 6th overall while Dudley clocked in at 14th; Season 2 DLC incomers M. Bison and Elena finished at 15th and 43rd, respectively.
If popularity is indeed king, we might expect the likes of Sakura (2nd), Evil Ryu (11th), and Karin Kanzuki (12th) to join the roster soon (though all three made recent appearances in SF5, and Sakura and Evil Ryu were both in SF4).
Whom do you hope to see join the roster for Season 3 and beyond? We’d love to hear your thoughts on that matter as well as on Capcom’s stated criteria for selection in the comments section below.