The youth have taken over the majority, and they probably don’t even know who Vega is let alone Makoto
Street Fighter 6 reached a level of success and recognition that the series hasn’t seen since the early arcade days of Street Fighter 2, but that popularity is going to bring about changes and different considerations.
One big thing is the recent Season 4 reveal for Street Fighter 6 that contains Tifa Lockhart and three newcomers instead of any legacy characters, and the developers are starting to talk about that decision.
Director Takayuki Nakayama and Producer Shuhei Matsumoto have been conducting various interviews lately including with our friend Virginia Glaze over at Dexerto.
We’ve previously covered what the devs had to say about getting Tifa from Final Fantasy into Street Fighter and their 10-year plan for the fighting game, but they also said some interesting things in regards to their current audience.
While the prospect of bringing fresh faces into the series does raise some excitement for new possibilities with Yasmine, Arjun and Bosch, many longtime fans have been left at least a bit disappointed that prior fan-favorites like Makoto and Dudley remain sidelined for at least another year.
This was apparently a deliberate shift by the Street Fighter team because the influx of new players they’re seeing are skewing heavily to the younger side compared to what it used to be.
“First, we hadn’t released any completely new characters since the autumn following the game’s launch, so adding new characters was a priority,” said Matsumoto via Dexerto. “Secondly, to strengthen the Street Fighter brand — not just Street Fighter 6 specifically, but the franchise as a whole — we felt that introducing new characters was essential.”
“And finally, the player demographic for Street Fighter 6 has skewed much younger; while the core player base used to be in the 35–40 age range, the largest segment is now between 15 and 25. We wanted to support these players by offering them a fresh experience, one where they can play with a sense of novelty and relate to the characters on their own level. That is the reasoning behind our strategy to bolster the roster with new characters.”
“While the core player base used to be in the 35–40 age range, the largest segment is now between 15 and 25” – Shuhei Matsumoto
We’d already seen some of this with how hard Capcom has tried to push the current lineup of SF6’s new generation between Luke, Jamie and Kimberly especially alongside A.K.I., Manon, JP and Marisa.
And while it may be hard to hear for fans who’ve been around for 30+ years, their decision makes sense on the business side of Street Fighter 6 as a product.
The average 18-year-old picking up Street Fighter 6 for the first time is not going to give a crap about a middle-aged Vega since they have no attachment to the past.
For more frightening perspective, these 15 and 16-year-old players weren’t even born yet the last time Makoto and Dudley were added to a game in Super Street Fighter 4, so let that sink in a bit.
Now, the younger characters like Yasmine and Bosch were made to look cool for them and get their attention.
These 15 and 16-year-old players weren’t even born yet the last time Makoto and Dudley were added to a Street Fighter game
And this does importantly give Street Fighter its first Filipina world warrior too after nearly 40 years and a strong community in the country.
“For Yasmine, the decision was driven by the fact that the Street Fighter 6 FGC has a strong presence of players, commentators, and tournament organizers with Filipino roots; we wanted to reach out to that community and also increase the number of players from Southeast Asia,” said Matsumoto.
“I had actually spoken to the director about creating a Filipino character like Yasmine, so it’s wonderful to see so much positive feedback coming from people in the Philippines. As for India, the country has a massive population, and we wanted to add a character from there as part of our future outlook to expand the Street Fighter 6 player base; looking at the reactions now, it’s great to see that the response from the Filipino community has been exactly what we had hoped for.”
Obviously, there could have been a compromise to split Year 4 between newcomers and classic fighters to try and please both audiences, but after the last two seasons focused on returning characters (plus guests and Ingrid), the pendulum has swung in the other direction for now.
Capcom is going to need to work towards finding a balance between the young fans and the ones who’ve stuck around for decades, which may lead to more experimentation and concessions made for each side.
But those of us over 30 have to also accept the reality that we are not the majority anymore and not necessarily part of the main target demographic.
That’s part of the double-edged sword for blowing up in popularity, and I’m seeing more and more that it’s just part of aging and the shift in generations / culture in general.
It’s cool that new people are finding and enjoying the thing you like, but that’s also going to shift the audience usually towards younger people / a new generation.
Capcom already has our money for Street Fighter 6, and they know that a lot of players who’ve stuck around the full three years thus far will probably continue to buy their DLC to keep up with the game no matter who is in it.
Now, the company has its eye on a new generation of potential consumers who are proving more eager to hop on board the train, so they’re not going to leave that money sitting on the table — and we can just hope they don’t go too far as to alienate those who built the castle in the first place.
Being around longer doesn’t magically make us more important, but it doesn’t mean we are now unimportant either.
Street Fighter 6 isn’t going anywhere any time soon, so there’s still probably six or seven years left to add more favorites to please old heads while evolving further for those coming into the scene fresh.
We’ll just have to see how Capcom handles this balancing act moving forward and try and make your voices heard in places like Street Fighter 6’s current player survey asking for feedback.
