Street Fighter 6 is designed to be a fighter ‘that everyone can play’

theverge.com:

Street Fighter has been around since 1987, starting life as an arcade phenomenon before eventually selling an estimated 47 million copies across various iterations and platforms. Even still, Takayuki Nakayama believes it can reach a much larger audience. “I want to make a Street Fighter game that everyone can play, not just core fans,” he says. “I want to share the love that I have for Street Fighter with as wide of an audience as possible.”

Nakayama is the game director on Street Fighter 6, which is due to launch next year. It’s a game that looks incredible in motion but also one that makes some key changes to the series’ formula in an attempt to broaden the audience, not just for Street Fighter but for fighting games in general.

I spoke to Nakayama at Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles earlier this month, where I also had a chance to spend around 30 minutes playing the in-development game. For the director, it was a chance to finally see real players experiencing the game he’s been working on since 2018. “I see fighting games as a form of communication between people,” he explains. “Online play is great, but actually seeing people play against each other in real life and being excited and competitive, it’s been great.”

The most obvious addition toStreet Fighter 6 is a new control scheme. In addition to the traditional — and comparatively complicated — control layout, there’s a new option called “modern,” in which many special attacks are reduced to a single button. The idea is to make it so players can still do cool things in the game, like toss a fireball, without memorizing tricky button combinations. It was incredibly simple to pick up during my short time with the game, even though I haven’t played a SF game seriously