Capcom Apologises For Street Fighter 5's Rough Launch

18.02.2024 - 22:57 / thegamer.com

Capcom has celebrated Street Fighter 5's eighth anniversary by apologising for its rough launch and thanking fans for sticking all the way up to Street Fighter 6.

Even though Street Fighter 6 has stumbled a few times since its launch thanks to expensive outfits and some strange, equally expensive crossovers, it still stands as an incredible comeback from Capcom and the disastrous launch of Street Fighter 5 that nearly threatened to take the series off the map for good.

For those who don't know or are lucky enough to have erased it from their memory, Street Fighter 5 was panned by fans and critics when it launched thanks to a lack of content, a business-like visual identity, and a lacklustre online experience. Things improved massively as the years went on and Street Fighter 5 eventually won most of the community back, but it seems that Capcom is still feeling a little bad about it eight years later.

This week marked the eighth anniversary of Street Fighter 5 and, to celebrate the occasion, the official Japanese account shared a reflective statement that is surprisingly honest about the game's history. The statement begins by acknowledging the game's problems when it launched, including a lack of content, network issues, and more, before apologising for letting fans down.

The Twitter post then goes on to say that the Street Fighter 5 development team did a "lot of self-reflection" after the game's launch and worked to resolve all of the things that fans weren't happy about. After pointing out how much was added to the game, the message then thanks players for sticking with the game, which still sees hundreds of thousands of players eight years after release.

"From the beginning to the middle of the release, there were network issues, lack of content, etc... We are truly sorry for the content that did not meet the expectations of many of you."

This isn't the first time that Capcom has talked about the rough state that Street Fighter 5 launched in, but it's particularly heartwarming to see it come up considering the massive success of Street Fighter 6 and how that took the series right back to the top of the genre. What started out as a very rough generation for the series has turned into one of its best, so it's nice to see Capcom acknowledging how far its come.