In 2016, Capcom released what was then the latest addition to their flagship fighting game franchise, Street Fighter 5. Street Fighter 5 released as a critical flop and commercially, it hit 4 million sales in about 4 years, definitely underwhelming by Capcom’s standards. So it’s safe to say that, a year after its release in 2023, Street Fighter 6 hitting 4 million sales in a fourth of the previous entry’s time has Capcom clapping their hands.
Fighting games aren’t exactly big sellers, they’re a niche genre for a niche crowd, and it’s rare for a non-Mortal Kombat fighting game to do well when it comes to sales, no matter how critically successful it is, so 4 million is a very respectable number for a fighting game title. The main challenge facing Street Fighter 6 moving forward is retaining those players to keep a steady flow of income from the sales the game can generate in extra content as well as tournaments and streams.
In that regard Street Fighter 6 still has some work to do, for all its faults Street Fighter 5 was absolutely flooded with costumes, and one could say that the costumes made for Street Fighter 5 very much kept that game alive. By contrast, Street Fighter 6 has only released one costume, and the spaces between DLC characters were massive, though it seems like they’re course correcting for that latter problem with Terry Bogard releasing later this month, a mere 2 months after M. Bison came out.
It’s good that Street Fighter 6 sold so well, but the team cannot afford to be complacent. A bigger emphasis on costumes and customizations for the actual roster rather than the player avatar would be a good step in the right direction, and there are several gameplay changes that many would like to see happen, but for now Capcom’s fighting game division can pat themselves on the back for a job well done.