Street Fighter V may have a smaller roster at launch

Charlier Nash in Street Fighter V

The rumours that Street Fighter V will only have 16 fighters may just true. According to a recent statement by Street Fighter V’s producer, Yoshinori Ono, the game will have a very limited selection of fighters at launch. Famitsu had a chance to interview the man at the recent Taipei Game Show in Taiwan, where he spoke about the games new character, as well as his desire to keep the roster small.

Shoryken has translated the interview with Ono, and though the producer seemed excited about the games new character, he added that the selection has been made smaller for several reasons.

Firstly, he explained that a smaller selection of fighters would help ease in beginners. A larger roster would make it quite difficult for newcomers to learn every single character move. The second reason for a small roster was to reduce production costs. A larger roster would mean larger production costs so the developers had no choice but to keep the roster small due to their limited budget.

Capcom has only confirmed three characters for Street Fighter V, these include the popular Ryu and Chun-Li, which isn’t too surprising since they are the poster characters for the Street Fighter franchise. The third character, Charlie Nash, was added due to popular demand. Nash has not been featured in any of the Street Fighter games since his initial appearance in Street Fighter Alpha III.

So, Street Fighter fans who have been expecting to see all their favourite characters in the game may be a bit disappointed with the games small roster, but hopefully Capcom does not make this worse and by adding more characters as part of paid DLC packs.