The tale of video game development is usually one of compromise. Whether this is due to technical limitations, lack of time, budget or a combination of the three.
But sometimes special games emerge from an environment where these limitations are removed, and it sounds like Street Fighter 6’s development team had to struggle behind the scenes.
Game Reporter They recently released the cover story for Street Fighter 6 online, which gives a little insight into how Capcom’s management stepped back and convinced them that their vision for the game was worth it.
It boiled down to the core idea behind SF6, to create something that captured 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 almost bring it back to the Street Fighter II era,” producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya said via Game Informer. “We wanted to make another Street Fighter game for everyone, not just for existing fans of the series, and to experience the same feeling that all types of gamers fall in love with fighting games…with Street Fighter. When the concept was born, it was nurtured by Nakayama-san, which I resonated very strongly. It’s a challenge but one worth taking on.”
Although they came in to take over the lead developer roles after Street Fighter 5, Director Takayuki Nakayama and Producer Shuhei Matsumoto, along with a relatively inexperienced team, still don’t have much of a role or authority to make big executive decisions on their own.
Yoshinori Ono is no longer there to captain the ship, but Tsuchiya, who has apparently been at Capcom for over 30 years, has stepped in to be a voice in their corner when they face off against those in charge of the company.
“It took time to convince certain people outside the team—the decision makers—to explain why these new features were so necessary,” Nakayama said. “We’re trying to achieve a lot compared to other fighting games, but we want Street Fighter 6 to be an important and maybe a gateway for a lot of people to get involved and excited about fighting games.”
Those with boots on the ground will no doubt want to do everything they can to avoid the disaster that is Street Fighter 5’s launch, but it’s also easy to see why Capcom is reluctant to give them everything they want.
Street Fighter X Tekken, Street Fighter 5 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, as the company’s last 3 major fighting game releases for the company, all underperformed.
Hell, they just revealed it SF5 was slated for 6 seasons of DLC content before it was dropped to 4 – and then got the green light for a 5th season after the success of Champion Edition.
Meanwhile, other big properties like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter are making Capcom more money than ever with Street Fighter playing catch-up.
Fortunately for everyone, it looks like we won’t really be hearing about management interference on this particular project.
“It’s very rare that the games where the team is able to deliver everything that they’re aiming for do,” said Tsuchiya. “There are always some kind of compromises that have to be made or ideas that have to be scrapped due to budget, schedule, resource issues. But this time, when it comes to the fundamental things that Nakayama-san wants to accomplish with his dream project, it seems like there are no flaws or compromises for this title. we haven’t gone.”
We’ve seen the team take new steps with the franchise, such as the ability for players to create custom avatars to walk around and interact with the all-new Battle Hub, as well as the biggest piece of single-player content Street Fighter has ever seen. SF6’s World Tour.
Game Informer sounds like Capcom’s management is now fully behind their fighting game team, and all the positive attention SF6 has received so far is probably helping to quell any lingering doubts.
Whether or not Street Fighter 6 succeeds in its goal of reviving the series and potentially taking it to new heights remains to be seen.
But it’s nice to know that the bunch of people who built SF6 know what Street Fighter is all about and why it’s important to do it right.
