Street Fighter 6 producer Shuhei Matsumoto revealed how dire things were for Capcom’s flagship fighting game franchise during the Street Fighter V era and explained how he and director Takayuki Nakayama worked together to save the series from death.

It’s no secret that Street Fighter V stumbled massively when it launched in February 2016. Many players felt that it was shipped out in an unfinished state, as it lacked basic elements like an arcade mode or story mode, on top of its incredibly unstable netplay.

Shuhei Matsumoto — who stepped in as producer for Street Fighter V near the end of its lifetime following Yoshinori Ono’s exit from Capcom in 2020 — alongside director Takayuki Nakayama, recognized that the franchise as a whole was in peril, and believed that the Street Fighter IP might actually fade into obscurity within the next decade if they didn’t act fast.

"When the two of us were talking during Street Fighter V, we realized that if we didn't do something about Street Fighter, the Street Fighter IP would probably die in 10 years. It was critical. So, we had to make it a game where people would get to know it all over again and play it again,” Matsumoto said during an October 2026 interview with Karin Ohira.

Matsumoto explained that SFV’s aging playerbase was one example of this issue, saying Capcom needed to target younger players if it wanted Street Fighter to live.

"At that time, the player base for Street Fighter V was roughly 35 to 45 years old.

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