No matter how much we crib about Capcom’s continuous policy of sticking to a single franchise and releasing and re-releasing the same fighting game year after year, the reality is that we end up playing and enjoying the same game because of how addictive and epic they are. Similar enthusiasm is expected with the upcoming Street Fighter 5. However, all the enthusiasm and excitement, as it seems, will be put to a hold for a while.
According to reports, Capcom is set to hit the delay button on Street Fighter 5, as the game is not expected to go official anytime before 2015. This is a major disappointment for all those who have so long been loyal to the franchise and were anticipating the final game before the end of the current year.
Capcom’s producer Tomoaki Ayano was recently interviewed by VG247, and while revealing certain details about the upcoming title, it was confirmed that fans shouldn’t expect the game to arrive for a long time.
“Game development is a long and arduous process,” he stated. “If you look at the history of the series, it took six years to go from Street Fighter II to Street Fighter III, and nine years to go from Street Fighter III to Street Fighter IV. Purely based on that it would probably take us until the year 2018 before Street Fighter V comes out. So I hope everyone will play Ultra Street Fighter IV for a long time.”
Basically, Capcom doesn’t want to see the popularity of its upcoming titles diminish with the revelation of the next Street Fighter, and since keeping a hold on the market is essential, the next Street Fighter has been delayed. And the market, sadly, doesn’t work according to fans’ wishes.
Additionally, on the topic of characters such as Elena, Rolento, Hugo and Poison (last seen in Street Fighter x Tekken last year) making a comeback to the Super Street Fighter 4 roster along with a fifth, unannounced character, Jun simply stated: “Users do not need to worry.”
And this is “because the new characters will definitely not just be copy and pasted from Street Fighter X Tekken. If we did that, they would undoubtedly be the strongest characters in the game. The reason for this is down to the difference in gameplay systems, most notably Boost Combos. Boost Combos formed the basis of the battle system in Street Fighter X Tekken and do not exist in Street Fighter IV."
"Besides adjusting the characters for a game engine without Boost Combos, each will need to have many moves added as well, such as Ultra Combos and Super Combos. A simple rip wouldn’t allow us to make the necessary changes, so a lot of work is going on behind the scenes,” he added.
