In an interview with Gamespot, Street Fighter 5 Producer Yoshinori Ono addressed Street Fighter 5's PS4 console exclusivity by telling interviewer Matt Dhalgren that:
"[Laughs] There’s plenty of time to save $300 before the game comes out. The PlayStation 4 is at a very attractive price point at the moment. [Laughs]"
Whilst a rather brutally direct answer, it is crucial to remember that Street Fighter was in fact funded by Sony therefore any hope at seeing the game on other consoles is slim. Without Sony's input, Street Fighter 5 would probably still have its estimated 2018 release. Yoshinori Ono has not yet provided further comment.
The rest of the information given in the interview was mainly reinforcing previous news regarding the games business model. However, Ono also confirmed that there will be a second wave of DLC characters. Whilst hardly a surprise, having conformation this early could allude to the fat that they might indeed already be laying out plans for potential characters. With the first wave of DLC characters looking to introduce Alex, Urien, Guile, Balrog, Juri and Ibuki, we can probably expect some more old favorites that have not made it into the base game such as Dudley, Akuma, Sean and perhaps the rest of the Street Fighter 2 cast including Fei Long, T.Hawk and Dee Jay at some point in the future.
For those wondering about how microtransactions will be implemented in Street Fighter 5 Ono provided further details in the interview. Having to carry more of the burden of the games financial support without the multiple releases of past Street Fighter games, Street Fighter 5's microtransactions will focus on cosmetic items. Content that would previously be available in further releases such as characters and stages will be possible to obtain by earning in game currency 'Fight Money' which you can earn by winning daily challenges, winning ranked fights or spending more time with a character which levels them up. However, some of the cosmetics will be earned only through the paid Zenny currency. This is restricted to just purely cosmetic items, with none of it impacting game play. Crucially, more universal changes such as balancing will be entirely free to anyone who owns the base game.
Also in Street Fighter News, the plans for the Capcom cup have been finalized. 32 top Ultra Street Fighter 4 players will gather at the San Fransisco PlayStation Experience for the finals on December 6th to compete for the chance to receive some of the $250,000 prize pool with the 1st place winner receiving $125,000. Check here for more information including scheduling and other Capcom Cup events.
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Quick Take
Whilst Ono's comment could be interpreted as a little inflammatory, it is a very pragmatic response. Sony's large backing of the projects was most likely responsible for getting the project off the ground and providing the level of quality we are to expect from Street Fighter 5. Although Xbox One users might be understandably disappointed with the response, it is in no way an unexpected one. The truth is, Xbox One users will most likely not see Street Fighter 5 on their system in the near future going of Sony's previous history of safeguarding their console exclusives, with titles like Bloodborne, another title with a large amount of Sony backing, seeing no plans for any other platform release.