Following up on our previous theory of why Season 2 DLC characters for Street Fighter 6 may be coming from Street Fighter 4, today we’re examining Street Fighter 3 for its potential to be the basis of SF6 Season 3’s DLC characters in 2025.
Street Fighter 3 is one of the most controversial games in the entire franchise, because Capcom brought in 15 newcomers to the series, and left quite a few of the most popular characters on the cutting room floor, like Guile and Dhalsim.
Street Fighter 3 didn’t actually start out as a Street Fighter game, but due to pressure to deliver a much hyped 3rd entry in the franchise, Capcom started turning it into the game we now know.
Street Fighter 3 is generally considered to be the least successful entry in the franchise from a business perspective, as the return on investment for this game wasn’t good, with some reports saying it lost money, while others saying it barely broke even. After Third Strike was released in 1999, it took Capcom nearly a decade to make another entry in the Street Fighter series.
Things were so bad after the release of SF3 that Yoshinori Ono could only garner a very small budget to build a prototype of Street Fighter 4. He said right up until the moment that game was released, it was seen as an unwanted child at Capcom. Street Fighter 4 would be released to critical acclaim and has sold close to 10 million copies now, over it’s lifetime.
Some people look at SF3 as the pinnacle of the franchise from a gameplay perspective, and even internally at Capcom, it was viewed that way by some of the staff, so they were hesitant to make a new entry, out of fear that they couldn’t top this game.
Timestamps:
0:00 – Season 3 DLC characters in SF6 may be from Street Fighter 3
4:17 – Yun
10:02 – Alex
14:08 – Q (and G)
18:34 – Dudley
21:45 – Ibuki
26:03 – Urien
29:43 – Yang
31:56 – Makoto
36:00 – Elena
40:44 – Hugo
44:35 – Oro
48:05 – Necro
49:52 – Remy
52:36 – Sean
55:46 – Twelve
58:40 – Jon and Kate’s picks for Season 3 DLC
SF3 has aged like wine for some, as there are a number of people in the Fighting Game Community who feel it’s the best game in the entire series, despite its lack of sales popularity compared to the other titles.
People who love this entry tend to be extremely passionate about it, and that transfers right over to the cast members who debuted in this title — the fans who love these characters are very passionate about them.
As for why Street Fighter 3’s cast members could be the main basis for DLC for Season 3 of Street Fighter 6, this was the next game released to the masses after SF4, and if Capcom follows suit for how things were done in Season 1, that means we could see 3, 4 or maybe even more characters included from this game. This is a theory we originally proposed back in 2022, before SF6 was released.
Just to recap, Season 1 was SF5 which is official, Season 2 could be SF4, Season 3 would be SF3, Season 4 is next with Alpha and Season 5 would be Street Fighter 2, according to our long running theory. And if a potential Season 6 happens, Capcom may even revisit Street Fighter 1, although that’s less likely as they haven’t traditionally gone that far back with their DLC releases.
When Street Fighter 3 added so many new characters, we got to see some new and unique playstyles introduced, and it could make a lot of sense for Capcom to add these fighters in 2025 to really diversify and help evolve the gameplay in the latest title.
These games can change heavily when new characters are added, as they tend to shift the game’s meta and match ups, as high tier characters have to be accounted for in competitive circles.
For example, if your character is weak to Dive Kicks, and someone like Yun is added to the game, that can have a dramatic impact on character usage and the tiers.
Ignoring strong characters is a recipe for disaster for competitive players, so when top tier fighters are added, that traditionally heavily changes how the game is played.
In the video embedded above, you can find a rundown of all 15 newcomers who were added to SF3, and how they may shake out if they’re included in Season 3 of Street Fighter 6, along with our picks of who we think should be included in the DLC pack.
Timestamps are available so you can skip around to the sections you find most interesting. The characters covered are: Yun, Alex, Q (and G), Dudley, Ibuki, Urien, Yang, Makoto, Elena, Hugo, Oro, Necro, Remy, Sean and Twelve along with Jon and Kate’s individual picks for Season 3 DLC.
Please jump into the comments here on the site and on YouTube with your thoughts on who you’d most like to see as DLC characters in Season 3, along with your opinions on this theory and where Street Fighter 6 is headed in the future.
