Street Fighter V Revealed

The release calendar for Sony’s PS4 gaming console was a bit light heading into this holiday season, but the company fully intends on delivering a lineup of high-profile titles exclusive to its consoles in 2015 and beyond, if recent announcements are any indication. Among the most exciting games the company revealed at its PlayStation Experience event this past weekend is Street Fighter V. When it launches it’ll only be available on the PS4.

Sony gave everyone a brief look at Street Fighter V this weekend during its PlayStation Experience event. It then followed that initial reveal up with a Street Fighter V announcement trailer and a gameplay trailer on its PlayStation Blog.

The announcement trailer itself is all about building hype for the game. In that trailer we say everything from graffiti and Street Fighter themed controllers  to fans playing past versions of the game in a crowd competitively. Very little of the game is seen. The video ends with an invitation for players to “Rise Up.”

Of the two video previews, the gameplay trailer is probably what serious Street Fighter fans are looking to check out. In that video we see actual video from the game. There’s Chun-Li and Ryu introducing themselves as they normally would before a round in past games. Chun-Li knocks Ryu through a wall and into a club. There they battle some more until the gameplay trailer ends. The characters and environment in this gameplay trailer look great, though a note at the bottom of the screen indicates that this may not be how the final game looks. The world around them seems pretty detailed, but not as detailed as each character. Both Ryu and Chun-Li are so detailed that you can see the folds in their muscles and the texture on their clothing. Neither trailer included a look at the game’s interface.

Typically, games that were previously available on multiple consoles don’t go back to being exclusive in later iterations. Past editions of Street Fighter have been available on the Xbox 360 and PS3. In fact, the franchise has a long standing history with all gaming consoles. By locking it down, Sony is hoping that users who want to play the game bad enough will upgrade to its PS4 gaming console instead of Microsoft’s Xbox One. Microsoft is doing the same thing with Tomb Raider. Rise of the Tomb Raider will only be available on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 at launch in 2015. At some point, versions of Rise of the Tomb Raider will arrive for other gaming consoles. Whether that’s possible with Street Fighter V isn’t yet well known.

Street Fighter V will only be available on Sony’s PS4 gaming console, but PC users will get to play the game too. In fact, having a PC version is relevant to the success of the game. Street Fighter V will have cross-platform play. Players will be able to challenge each other, no matter which version of the game they have. That sounds pretty basic, but most game developers don’t let populations from different versions of their game mix. Destiny, for example, pairs players with others playing on their same console. A Destiny on Xbox One player can only play with other Destiny on Xbox One players.

Unfortunately, the release day for Street Fighter V for the PS4 and PC are unknown. Sony’s post about the game indicates it’s in early development. As such, final features and a list of characters isn’t available. It’s entirely possible that Street Fighter V won’t make it to the PS4 until sometime in 2016. 2015 is also a possibility, but not one heavily hinted at during the announcement.