Is Street Fighter 6 for new players?

There was a time years ago when I played a lot of fighting games. The sort of sessions where you'd get together with a bunch of friends, huddle around a screen and take turns passing around controllers in unofficial mini-tournaments. If you weren't up, you'd be heckling the current players or just chatting amongst yourselves. No-one was an expert, there were no arcade sticks in sight, and - in the interest of full transparency - there was a fair bit of button bashing going on. It was so much fun, but no-one playing was going to win any actual ranked battles any time soon.

So that brings me to a question: can a lapsed and fairly casual fighting game fan find things to enjoy with Street Fighter 6? Well, after recently spending a couple of hours with the game, my answer would probably be yes, yes you can.

Street Fighter 6 isn't shy about letting you know it's keen to welcome new players with open and cartoonishly muscled arms. Let's be honest, buying into a fighting game if they aren't already very much your thing is a hard sell, and Street Fighter in particular isn't the kind of game many people play casually - the franchise has been very much focused on its hardcore community for some time now. But it's clear from this latest upcoming offering that Capcom has realised that it can't depend on the same community of fans forever without reaching out to potential new players. Thus, a lot of Street Fighter 6's new features are made with those curious about fighting games but too intimidated to try in mind.

If you're already a fighting game fan, great news - all of the features and mechanics you already love are there and they're just fine. This one is just for the casuals. Here's a video breakdown of why Street Fighter 6 might be your ticket back into the genre.