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Rumour: Street Fighter VI's new direction causing delays

A new leak claims Ono has been replaced and development extended, with SFV Season 5 filling the gap between releases.

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It would seem as if Street Fighter V's poor launch four-and-a-half years ago (it released short of content, almost half-baked) left some wounds at Capcom that haven't yet healed. The latest round of rumours paint a picture that seems to explain some of the company's recent actions, or at least, it's a convincing story. Where is Street Fighter VI? Why did Capcom just reactivate SFV for an unexpected fifth season? Who's taking care of the franchise as a new generation approaches?

All these questions might have answers as long as we take regular Capcom leaker Dusk Golem's comments as true, which some are inclined to do after they nailed previous insider info about Resident Evil. Apparently, Street Fighter VI was scheduled to release in 2021, but the internal testing with then long-time producer Yoshinori Ono didn't go down well internally, to the extent that they changed the project's direction, demoted Ono-san, and gave the game an extra year of development time.

Street Fighter 6

Was Street Fighter VI team-based?

The source claims that SF6 demos "were not received well internally or with testers", mostly because the game "was too focused on a team mechanic". Apparently, Ono himself was the key voice behind the project (in Japan it's normal that producers take on director duties as well), and this failure had him "demoted again", with another taking his position. In this regard, it's worth pointing out that Ono has been in and out Street Fighter leadership roles, and past rumours suggested that he was also demoted in 2018 after the release of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.

The speculation is that they put someone new in charge of SF6 to "redirect it and fix it" in the extended development time, with speculation pointing to Midori Yuasa, as she knows the community and was appointed CEO of Capcom Media Ventures to head the company's esports operations. At any rate, Dusk Golem claims to have heard that "the extra year & new director/fixes & direction they've taken it have been doing wonders" for the game.

While taking care to apply the usual pinch of salt, it's also worth mentioning that it's Yoshinori Ono who is often acknowledged as the man who managed to transition the series to the modern era with Street Fighter IV and that SFV is currently a much more complete, rewarding fighting game, with Season 5 exciting the community already.

The below video about all the Street Fighter V news is hosted by director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto, with no sign of Yoshinori Ono.

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Capcom's fighters are back, once again ready to punch people in the face. This time, both an updated game system and a massive single-player story awaits, and we've checked to see if it measures up.



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