Over the weekend during the Evolution 2013 tournament, Yoshinori Ono, executive producer of the Street Fighter series, officially unveiled the next version of the popular fighting game. Ultra Street Fighter 4 will add five new characters to the roster, new stages, new gameplay modes, and a slew of character changes and balances. Poison, Hugo, Elena, and Rolento were revealed during the announcement, and look to be conversions of their Street Fighter x Tekken models. The new stages were also confirmed to be converted from SF x T as well. The fifth character is still unknown, but according to Ono, it is someone that has never been playable in a Street Fighter game before. No details are available about the new game modes, but people are already speculating (or hoping) that one of the new modes is a fleshed out single player mode, similar to the one seen in Mortal Kombat 9.
It’s interesting to note that Capcom seems to be placing a lot of emphasis on making a game for the competitive scene with this latest iteration. Not only did they announce the game during the biggest fighting game tournament of the year, but the reveal trailer began with footage of various tournaments from the past year. Capcom also claimed that character balance changes were based on community feedback, and that the changes are being overlooked by Peter Rosas, aka Combofiend, a prominent member of the fighting game community.
Ultra Street Fighter IV is set to be released in “early 2014” on Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and Steam. There will be two versions; a digital upgrade version (presumably for those who already have Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition) for $14.99, and a standalone version for $39.99
