The history of game development is typically one of compromise. Whether due to technical limitations, lack of time, budget or a combination of all three.
Sometimes, though, special games emerge from an environment where those limitations are removed, and it seems that’s what the Street Fighter 6 development team had to fight behind the scenes for.
game informer recently released his Street Fighter 6 cover story online, detailing a bit of how Capcom’s management had to be pushed back and convinced that their vision for the game pays off.
Basically this boils down to the core idea behind SF6 to create something that captures the essence of what drew people to the genre in the first place.
“The concept I got from Nakayama-san was that we wanted to bring it back to almost what it was during the Street Fighter II era,” producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya said via Game Informer. “We wanted to make another Street Fighter game that wasn’t just for existing fans of the series, but for everyone and to have the same feeling that all types of players fall in love with fighting games…with Street Fighter. When that concept brought up by Nakayama-san was created, it resonated very strongly with me. It’s a challenge, but it’s a challenge worth accepting.”
Though they came in after Street Fighter 5 to take on lead development roles, director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto, along with their relatively less experienced team, still don’t have the seniority or authority to make the big executive decisions on their own. .
Yoshinori Ono is no longer there to captain the ship, but apparently that’s where Tsuchiya, who was also at Capcom for over 30 years, comes in to be the voice in their corner when they take on those in charge of the company.
“It took us time to convince certain people (decision makers) outside of the team to explain why these new features are so necessary,” Nakayama said. “We’re trying to achieve a lot compared to other fighting games, but we want Street Fighter 6 to be important and maybe a gateway for a lot of people to get involved and excited about a fighting game.”
Those with boots on the ground surely want to do everything they can to avoid the debacle that was the launch of Street Fighter 5, but it’s also easy to see why Capcom would be hesitant to give them everything they ask for.
Street Fighter X Tekken, Street Fighter 5, and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite far underperformed the company’s last 3 major fighting game releases.
Hell, they recently revealed that SF5 was originally planned for 6 seasons of DLC content before it was scaled down to 4, and was later greenlit for a fifth season after the success of Champion Edition.
Meanwhile, its other big properties like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter are making Capcom more money than ever, with Street Fighter being the catch-up.
Fortunately for everyone, though, it looks like we won’t really be hearing about management interference with this particular project.
“It’s very rare to see games come to fruition where they were able to deliver everything the team was looking for,” Tsuchiya said. “There’s always some sort of compromise that needs to be made or ideas that need to be scrapped due to budget, schedule, or resource issues. But this time, regarding the fundamental things that Nakayama-san wanted to achieve with his dream project It feels like we really haven’t had to make any kind of omissions or compromises for this title.”
We’ve seen the team take new steps with the franchise, like giving players the ability to create custom avatars to walk around and interact with with the new Battle Hub, as well as the biggest piece of single player content Street Fighter has ever seen. . SF6 world tour.
Game Informer makes it sound like Capcom’s leadership is fully behind its fighting game team now, and all the positive attention SF6 has received thus far is probably helping to dispel any remaining doubts.
Whether or not Street Fighter 6 achieves its goal of reinvigorating the series and potentially taking it to new heights remains to be seen.
But it’s nice to know that there’s a group of people building SF6 who really care about what Street Fighter stands for and why it’s important to get it right.
