If you’ve been waiting for a chance to get hands-on with Street Fighter 6, your moment has finally arrived.
The Street Fighter 6 demo has arrived, just over a month and a half ahead of launch, on the PlayStation Store for PS5 and PS4. This isn’t a beta; it’s not time-limited. You can just pull it on down for free and get a feel for the game’s new systems and a few new characters on your own time. The demo dropped as part of this morning’s Street Fighter 6 showcase, along with its full Year One roster (Rashid and A.K.I. in Q3 2023, Ed in Q1 2024, and Akuma in Q2 2024).
Capcom’s hope is that Street Fighter 6 will be something of a cultural reset after fan discontent with Street Fighter 5 grew to engulf the game at the competitive level. The fighting game community accepted SF5 because Capcom made sure it had no real alternative, but it wasn’t terribly happy about it. Competitors made no secret of their broad dislike for the game, even as they worked to master it. Though Capcom made many attempts to improve the situation over the years, the foundation on which SF5 was built meant that many of its problems were inherent and immutable.
Street Fighter 6 attempts to reset the situation, changing up the vibe considerably, introducing new characters and new moves, reconfiguring the game’s netcode, and shaking up the story. Where Street Fighter 5 painted the series’ mainstays in a more heroic light, Street Fighter 6 sends everything back down to ground level. The grimy, graffiti aesthetic works to put the Street back in Street Fighter, attempting to turn every match into a grubby alleyway brawl (they’re not, they’re still dazzlingly technical chess matches played at the speed of sound, but that’s not the point).
The Street Fighter 6 demo contains the first part of the World Tour campaign, and a few modes in Fighting Grounds. Your World Tour progress won’t be saved, and the Battle Hub platform isn’t available in the demo either. Regardless, what is here should be more than enough to whet your appetite for future biffings (and give Capcom some valuable community feedback ahead of launch).
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