Street Fighter celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2022, Capcom points to ‘future development’ of the franchise

The Street Fighter franchise is celebrating its 35th anniversary in 2022 and Capcom is already hinting that it has some big plans—depending on where you look. 

If you just looked at the English social media channels across the Capcom and Street Fighter brands, all you’d see is a fancy 35th-anniversary logo and a basic message about celebrating the milestone. But the Japanese Street Fighter Twitter account included a bit more information. 

Along with the generic message, this specific tweet asked fans to “please look forward to the future development of the Street Fighter series.”

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the messaging is different and could just be a difference in approach from the regional social media teams—something that’s common across companies that work out of several countries. Despite that, it does seem well-timed for a potential upcoming announcement. 

Last week, Capcom announced it was canceling the Capcom Cup for the second straight year due to concerns surrounding COVID. Typically, that event or part of the Capcom Pro Tour were where the company would announce big projects related to the franchise, though that hasn’t stopped it from dropping news elsewhere in the past. 

Even with Capcom Cup 2021 being canceled, it’s highly likely a teaser or announcement for a new project will be shared in February, whether it’s during the makeup online event or on its own. And it’s also unlikely that the news will be more DLC for Street Fighter V: Champion Edition, seeing as the game just wrapped up its fifth season of DLC with the release of Luke in November. 

This doesn’t guarantee Street Fighter 6 is ready to be shown off, but the signs and comments from the devs are pointing to something along those lines. 

Originally released in arcades on Aug. 30, 1987, the original Street Fighter revolutionized fighting games and has turned into a globally recognizable and successful brand, with the video game portion of the franchise alone recording 47 million units sold globally as of September 2021. 

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the franchise in 2017, Capcom bundled 12 games together into the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection. At the very least, the developer will likely release some updated version of an older Street Fighter game. But there’s a good chance SF6 will be revealed at some point this year.