After a long road, the support for Street Fighter 5 is slowly starting to wind down. We’re now on the last batch of characters for the game, a roster that’s filled out considerably since its release back in 2016. While for now we need to bask in the final glory of the game, it’s never too soon to look to the future, and some think we may already be seeing hints of a Street Fighter 6.
Capcom announced that the winner of the Capcom Cup 2020 won’t be auto-qualified for the 2021 Cup. Why is this important? Well, for one it confirms that the Capcom Cup, the annual fighting game tournament sponsored by the company, will run until at least 2021. But maybe more importantly, this same thing happened back with the 2015 Cup where the winner of Ultra Street Fighter 4 did not auto-qualify for 2016. The reason was because Street Fighter 5 was only a few months away and 2016’s Cup would be a whole new ballgame, so to speak. This has lead to much speculation that the next entry in the series will come before the Capcom Cup in 2021, which usually happens near the end of the year.
Just to be clear, this is speculation at this point, as of now there’s no other solid evidence that SF6 is coming that soon. However, there’s not a lot of reason for Capcom to do that if there wasn’t something special planned. While it seems awfully soon for the next entry, it’s not impossible either. We’ll just have to wait and see.