Street Fighter 5 launched in 2016 in rough shape, and if things hadn't changed, the classic fighting game franchise might have been dead and buried by 2026. That's according to Street Fighter 6 producer Shuhei Matsumoto and game director Takayuki Nakayama, who recently spoke about how Capcom's signature fighting game franchise was knocking on death's door at one point, before a turnaround strategy reenergized it for a new generation of digital fisticuffs.

Following Capcom veteran Yoshinoro Ono's exit from the company in 2020, Matsumoto and Nakayama started work on a new Street Fighter game that could appeal to both the existing--and aging--player base while attracting new blood to the series. "When the two of us were talking during Street Fighter 5, 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 in an interview with Karin Ohira (via IGN). "At that time, the player base for Street Fighter 5 was roughly 35 to 45 years old. In 10 years, these people will be 60. It’s difficult to sustain the franchise if we only rely on that group."

Matsumoto added that while Street Fighter was still recognizable as a franchise, that didn't mean people were engaging with it.

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