We’ve arrived at the strange paradox where the better Street Fighter 6 performs, the less likely we’ll see anything else
Street Fighter 6 made the iconic fighting game franchise the most popular its ever been since the height of the arcade days, and it shows no signs of slowing down any time soon with Season 4 now underway.
While this is generally great for Capcom itself, the otherwise good situation is also painting a less bright future for their fighting games as a whole.
The way things stand at the moment, we’re looking at a landscape that is dominated by Street Fighter 6 and not much else despite the amount of quality titles in the streets across the genre.
It’s a sad state in an odd way brought on by Capcom’s success and the current structure of the entire industry.
Street Fighter may be Capcom’s bread and butter when it comes to fighting games, however, we have to remember there used to be much more coming out of the developer than just that.
Capcom once had a fairly expansive roster of fighting games that disappeared outside of being repackaged in the Capcom Fighting Collection titles, which may raise hopes for their eventual return, but probably won’t happen at this rate.
We used to have Darkstalkers, Marvel vs. Capcom, Capcom vs. SNK, Rival Schools, as well as some more experimental yet fondly-remembered titles like Power Stone, Super Gem Fighter, Super Puzzle Fighter 2, Cyberbots, Red Earth and Plasma Sword.
Most of them will never see the light of day again with a brand new entry no matter how many times fans ask for them.
And the better Street Fighter 6 continues to perform, that small chance shrinks even smaller.
The harsh reality is that those games just never historically sold anywhere near as well as Street Fighter.
Even Darkstalkers and Capcom vs. SNK never had a single entry that pushed more than a million home copies, and the Capcom Fighting Collections that contained them still haven’t reached the coveted platinum mark either.
Marvel vs. Capcom is the only series that ever did produce the sales, but even then the entire series has only reached 13 million copies as opposed to Street Fighter’s 60 million.
Capcom did try to support multiple fighting games at once in the past two generations that didn’t end up working out and pushed them down the Street Fighter-only pipeline we’re still on today.
Street Fighter 4, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter x Tekken all got to exist around the same time, however, the latter only reached 1.9 million while MvC3’s original outings put up 3.4 million next to SF4’s combined 9 million.
We almost got a brand new Darkstalkers around that time as well that was canceled, and the night warriors have remained dead ever since.
They tried one more time with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, but that too ended up being killed in a matter of months and poisoned the well for the years that followed.
And we’re not liking our chances of seeing another any time soon with Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls essentially taking its place for presumably multiple years moving forward.
One of the other major factors that extends far outside of Capcom itself is just the structure of AAA game development as it stands now.
Creating large-scale video games has never been more expensive and time consuming, and while Capcom has remained one of the most successful developers left standing, that doesn’t mean they have infinite resources to go around.
Street Fighter 6 is performing very well for a fighting game, however, it’s still not enough to get the same level of attention that their biggest titles like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter receive — and even the latter has been on more shaky ground after Monster Hunter Wilds.
Capcom currently only has the one fighting game team in place, and it’s all hands on deck for their current title.
They’ve previously said Street Fighter 6 could be supported for 10 years, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for much else at the moment besides building up the skeleton of Street Fighter 7 in the background.
This obviously extends far beyond Capcom too, but it’s the most pronounced with them considering their legacy.
Bandai Namco is less likely to attempt say another Soul Calibur while Tekken remains their focus, but they also have the resources as a massive publisher with the rights to many IP to outsource something like Dragon Ball FighterZ to another developer.
Speaking of Arc System Works, they’re about the only ones right now willing to support multiple major fighting games at once with Marvel Tokon and Guilty Gear Strive as well as Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, which seems to be winding down, as well as publishing titles like Under Night In-Birth 2.
But that’s in part due to how ArcSys is structured as a company that primarily focuses on fighting games, and even they are trying to branch out more.
SNK is working on multiple titles too with Art of Fighting being made in the background while Fatal Fury is up front and center, though, they still have a lot to prove.
Capcom, on the other hand, has nothing to prove with Street Fighter 6 taking over Japan and the wider Fighting Game Community already.
That’s not really on us to say that Capcom has grown complacent with Street Fighter’s success, but they have become comfortable in a way they were not when trying to right the ship with the last game.
When games take five plus years and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to make in the current climate, there’s not much room at these large publishers to take experimental swings that absolutely did not pay off in the past.
Capcom has been more willing to branch out a bit more with original titles like Pragmata and Exoprimal with only the former really finding a footing and bringing back a few classics like Onimusha and Okami now, but Darkstalkers just doesn’t have that same pull no matter how popular Morrigan is.
If we were to get something like that these days, it would have to be done on the smaller budget scale like Mega Man: Dual Override and / or the hiring of an outside studio, which Capcom has moved away from in their fighting games after breaking off from Dimps.
But what of the crossovers?
Outside of Street Fighter, Capcom’s previous biggest fighting games have been the prominent crossovers with other companies.
That opens a whole other can of worms when it comes to global licensing deals.
Adding another pair of suits to the equation makes the situation exponentially more complex.
They already got burned pretty heavily the last time they tried with a new game when Disney appeared to pull support for Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite almost immediately despite their plans originally extending much further.
That bridge was apparently mended at least some with the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection, but Sony stepped in to eat their reconciliation lunch with Marvel Tokon now too.
The added risks involved combined with the rising development costs make it no wonder we’re not seeing these big crossover games anymore outside of like Super Smash Bros., and even then, Ultimate came out back in 2018.
Those crossover may not completely be off the table, though, if both companies are very much enthusiastic about the union.
So that does leave at least one potential avenue to save us from the Street Fighter-only future.
Capcom vs. SNK 3 has been discussed by both Capcom and SNK developers multiple times in recent years, and we’ve seen some initial fruits bore from their renewed partnerships already.
Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui of course joined Street Fighter 6 Season 2 while Chun-Li and Ken Masters crossed over to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.
Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama is also a very vocal fan of SNK’s classic fighting games while SNK’s Yasuyuki Oda has experience working with both developers.
Even with SNK’s willingness to give out their characters to other companies, however, there’s still some snags that could prevent CvS3 from fully forming.
Despite their pushes, SNK is still not the household name it once was with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves seemingly greatly underperforming what was hoped of it after the massive marketing push the revival received made little apparent difference in its actual sales.
On top of that, SNK is also on shaky ground in terms of its social capital with the company’s Saudi Arabian ownership sparking controversy and pushback both inside and outside of the Fighting Game Community.
At this point, Capcom vs. SNK 3 would stand to benefit SNK much more than it would Capcom, and the latter may not be willing to put up with the risks involved for a full new game.
The best shot for Capcom vs. SNK 3 existing could have stood with Hideaki Itsuno, but he left Capcom now too.
Itsuno did speak about dreaming of creating Rival Schools 3 or Capcom vs. SNK 3 since Capcom previously gave him almost a blank check to make Devil May Cry 5 to stay at the company, so one of its biggest supporters is no longer a factor.
And we had been really wishing to see Itsuno return to fighting games after all this time to put his unique spin on them again, but sadly it was not meant to be.
So the existence of CvS3 may come down to how hard Nakayama and the Street Fighter team would personally push for it, but when they’ve already got the golden goose of Street Fighter 6 in their hands, are they still willing to take the shot when there’s no real pressure to?
Like we mentioned above, Street Fighter 6 isn’t leaving the spotlight for years to come if Capcom can help it, and they seemingly don’t have the room to support another major fighting game now either.
So where do we go from here?
Well, Capcom has pretty much already showed us their strategy on this with Street Fighter 5 and 6.
Street Fighter 5 brought in Akira Kazama from Rival Schools as well as a bunch of other Capcom crossover costumes.
Street Fighter 6 already has Mai and Terry plus Final Fantasy 7’s Tifa Lockhart on the horizon in Season 4.
So instead of building out a full new game for these ideas, they’ll just get wrapped into Street Fighter’s blanket for the foreseeable future unless things change.
Crossover characters do introduce some of the licensing hurdles we discussed, but not nearly to the degree that a full game would entail.
If we’re going to see Darkstalkers or more Rival Schools characters return, it’s going to be in Street Fighter.
Ingrid’s arrival in Street Fighter 6 literally opened the door to let Capcom bring pretty much whoever they want into the mainline series, and they’re going to take advantage of that.
We’ve also seen Capcom talk about how the majority of Street Fighter 6’s playerbase is very young now too, so the new fans they’re targeting do not have the same level of attachment to these legacy characters that oldheads may have.
So they could try and use this as an opportunity to get more attention on their other fighting games from the past, but the team could also just be content with doing something brand new like we’re seeing with Season 4 being comprised of all newcomers.
We’re not saying a new Capcom fighting game or big crossover title is never going to happen again in history, however, the painting in front of us is very one-sided right now.
The current state of Capcom fighting games rests solely on the shoulders of Street Fighter, which can be great for Street Fighter fans, but also sad for those who love the wider gallery they once maintained beyond museum pieces of what once was.
