When footage leaked of Street Fighter V, the thing that everyone talked about wasn’t the fact that the world’s premiere fighting game would be making its current-gen debut. Instead, all talk centered on how this game was supposedly only going to be available on the PC and PlayStation 4. Though the language in the original trailer was very straight forward (“Exclusively On” as opposed to “First On”), many still refused to believe that this title would be a PS4 console exclusive.
The uncertainty has been put to rest today. During Sony’s PlayStation Experience event in Las Vegas, Sony’s Adam Boyes and Capcom’s Yoshinori Ono confirmed that the next iteration of the legendary fighting game would only appear on PC and PlayStation 4.
Boyes said that the game was made by both Capcom and Sony and that the “PS4 will be the only console this game ever appears on.”
Though this news is in and of itself monumental, the potentially bigger news item here is that there will be cross-platform play between the PC and PlayStation 4 versions of the game. This means that if you own the game on PlayStation 4 and your buddy owns it on PC, that you can both play against each other. While games like Final Fantasy XIV have cross-platform play, this is something that is extremely rare in the industry and is something that makes this title that much more unique.
As I’ve said on our Street Fighter V React Podcast, I still believe there is a possibility of future iterations of this game being available on the Xbox One. Street Fighter games have always received at least three iterations and there is no reason to believe that this one won’t either, especially nowadays where fan feedback can be received much faster. While Street Fighter V may be exclusive to PlayStation 4 and PC, there is nothing preventing Super Street Fighter V from appearing on another console. This is speculation on my part of course but it’s something that’s technically possible. After all, the once Xbox 360 exclusive Ninja Gaiden was released on the PlayStation 3 as Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Mass Effect, a game that Microsoft helped fund, eventually made its way to the PlayStation 3 as well.
Overall, this is a big coup for Sony who now have THE console for fighting game fans and the console which will be prominently used at EVO, especially now that Ultra Street Fighter IV has been confirmed to be released on the PlayStation 4.
