Looks like Capcom has finally decided to put their money where there mouth is and reveal the 3^rd costume for the 18 base characters in Street Fighter 6 which will be available on December 1st. After months of delaying the announcement for avatar item reveals these third costumes are a breath of fresh air for the Street Fighter community, and a sign that Capcom hasn’t completely forgotten about them. Some community members are even jokingly claiming that costume 3 has saved the game.

As stated last week, Capcom’s Japanese twitter announced costumes for 18 characters which meant the likely exclusion of DLC characters Rashid and AKI, and that has come true. Rashid and AKI’s 3^rd costume, alongside future DLC characters Ed and Akuma’s 3^rd costumes, will become available around the time Akuma is released sometime next spring.

Outfit 3 for the Year 1 characters will be released at the same time as the 4th character – Akuma.

— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) November 21, 2023

All the costumes seem to be lovingly crafted and work well within the RE Engine that Capcom used for Street Fighter 6, notably there seem to be very few clipping issues with the models, a flaw that plagued many costumes from the game’s predecessor Street Fighter 5. If you’re more interested in the stories behind these designs, there’s actually a blog post by the Street Fighter team as well as an accompanying Twitter thread detailing the designer’s decisions behind every one of them and they come with some charming factoids, such as Ryu’s 3^rd costume being an amalgamation of gifts given to him by his friends.

Our design team wanted to provide their comments on the inspiration, story, and elements of each outfit.

🎨 Read the Developer’s Column below:https://t.co/b127uBwkZN pic.twitter.com/t5tXrArpz1

— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) November 22, 2023

There are some practical concerns over the costumes in a competitive sense, however. Street Fighter 5 had several banned costumes as they made it difficult for competitive play. Many professional Street Fighter players immediately point to Blanka’s Blanka-Chan outfit, an outfit that was actually banned in Street Fighter 5, as a costume that will get banned immediately, as the bulky model makes it hard to see what the character is doing. Another costume that will likely be on the competitive chopping block is DeeJay’s, which is a bright eyesore that can camouflage what the character is doing, similar to Gill’s Pyron costume in 5.

On a more practical note, there is also some concern of the price of the costumes. Or rather, lack thereof. Despite having a release date announced, there has been no price attached, leading some to be concerned as to whether or not these costumes may be ludicrously priced, or if they will or won’t be available using the Street Fighter 6‘s in-game currency.

But even with these apprehensions this costume 3 announcement is largely heralded as a Godsend. A sign that Capcom will begin pouring more content with quality like this into the game, rather than the avatar costumes the playerbase has been disinterested in so far. Street Fighter 6 has a lot to live up to in terms of aesthetics; Street Fighter 5 was practically flooded with costumes, so much so that you could take a single character and have a different costume every day of the week, but with luck and a couple of months Street Fighter 6 will be well on its way to allowing player expression in this way soon. The first step to this will be taken when the costumes release December 1st, and if these outfits excite you then you’re in luck, as Street Fighter 6 is currently on sale on every platform it’s available on: Steam for PC, Playstation 4 and 5, and Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.