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At EVO 2015, Capcom made some announcements regarding Street Fighter V, some of which are fairly surprising to hear. They announced some big changes from the way they handled Street Fighter IV, and even the way they handled earlier Street Fighter titles that had multiple releases. It was all pretty unexpected, but certainly not unwelcome.

Most notably, this game will only receive a single version. There won't be multiple releases of Ultra this or Super that to deal with. That doesn't mean the major balance and system adjustments will simply be paid updates though. Instead, these updates will be entirely free. If that wasn't already a nice enough change, they dropped a very surprising bit of news:

All DLC will be available to be unlocked in-game for free. It doesn't matter if the content is available at release or is developed months after. You will not have to spend any actual money on any of the Street Fighter V DLC if you don't want to, whether it's new characters or anything else.

The way they'll manage this is with an in-game currency system used to "purchase" new content that is split into two parts:

Fight Money: This is earned in-game as you play.
Zenny: This is the microtransaction equivalent that can be purchased for real money in place of earning Fight Money.

Essentially, you use this currency to purchase all post-launch content. There is the potential for the system not to work out brilliantly depending on cost and how easily Fight Money is earned, but they hope to balance out the system in later beta phases. Undeniably, this is a very consumer friendly model for handling DLC.

All of this is a huge change from the way Street Fighter has been for decades now, and all of it seems perfectly geared towards improving the biggest flaws the series has accumulated.

Source: PS Blog

You can see the original slide pictures captured from EVO 2015 below. There's no specific source for them, but they were all available very shortly before the PS Blog announcement and reflect the same information with a couple extras:

Spoiler: EVO 2015 Presentation Slides

 

[Bimmel]

1 version? Unlockable DLC?

What did they smoke to have such great ideas? I like that!

 

[Sakitoshi]

It will be like MvsC2 then?? Where you need to beat countless times the story mode to earn enough points to unlock everything??
sounds tedious but at least doesn't cost actual money.

 

[kumikochan]

Let's grind the **** out of this game. Just another fancy way of saying F2P with the emphasis on spending more money instead of free.

 

[FAST6191]

Though I have no great objection to on disc locked/paywall content and kind of resent paying for things that used to be cheats/basic unlocks I suppose I can not see this as a net negative. Well done Capcom, you seem to have managed to fail slightly less than the competition and in the spirit of "you only have to be faster than your slowest friend" I guess that can be a success.

I am curious about this months after DLC business. Last time around MS quite notably said no to it, leading to fun things like the workaround that Super Meat Boy used ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103774-Super-Meat-Boy-Offers-Free-DLC-Through-Loophole ), and I wonder what has changed.

 

[Nathan Drake]

I am curious about this months after DLC business. Last time around MS quite notably said no to it, leading to fun things like the workaround that Super Meat Boy used ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103774-Super-Meat-Boy-Offers-Free-DLC-Through-Loophole ), and I wonder what has changed.

That depends on how exclusive Street Fighter V is, I suppose. If it never comes to the Xbox One, it won't be too big of a deal if Microsoft's policies don't cater to free DLC. Although in this case, I have the feeling all content will simply be an update for the game, and then the Zenny will be the only thing that actually exists outside of the game to be gotten separately. Basically, an in-game shop that deals in new DLC for game currency will be the main way of distributing DLC, as technically everybody will already have it after each update. Granted, they may make it so it downloads the DLC after purchase, but the former way I'm thinking of seems simpler for them.

 

[FAST6191]

Now that would be a turn of events to have the new Street Fighter be a PS4 (and arcade I guess) exclusive and never come to the xbone.

 

[Bubbysaur]

I'm crossing my fingers hoping that Capcom doesn't go back on their word and get money hungry later.

 

[Deboog]

 

[VMM]

I remember one friend of mine that has X1 saying:
Don't worry, they'll certainly release a Super Street Fighter V that will be multiplat.
hahaha

 

[Xzi]

Free would insinuate just that - No time or money needed for said DLC. But Time IS Money, and businesses know this.

Only if you have some means to be making money in that time you're spending doing other things. Otherwise, time is just time. My 66 hours in XCOM: EU/EW doesn't mean the game cost me $800+, in fact it provided fun in what would have otherwise been empty time.

 

[Maximilious]

Only if you have some means to be making money in that time you're spending doing other things. Otherwise, time is just time. My 66 hours in XCOM: EU/EW doesn't mean the game cost me $800+, in fact it provided fun in what would have otherwise been empty time.

Sure, but at my age the convenience of paying for content is a much better option to me then putting umpteen hours into a game. I've had roughly 700 some odd game days of WoW to account for in my day, but yeah, free just ain't free anymore to me lol

 

[mightymuffy]

That depends on how exclusive Street Fighter V is, I suppose. If it never comes to the Xbox One, it won't be too big of a deal if Microsoft's policies don't cater to free DLC. Although in this case, I have the feeling all content will simply be an update for the game, and then the Zenny will be the only thing that actually exists outside of the game to be gotten separately. Basically, an in-game shop that deals in new DLC for game currency will be the main way of distributing DLC, as technically everybody will already have it after each update. Granted, they may make it so it downloads the DLC after purchase, but the former way I'm thinking of seems simpler for them.

MS already offers the same setup of 'free' DLC in their own game Project Spark as shown here, and to be honest that game's version is what worries me a bit about SFV: gawd knows how many hours you'd have to plough into Spark to obtain the bigger packs for free....

 

[irvinscastle]

pls dont 180 capcom