The Street Fighter 6 Teaser Was Bad
The title of this post should probably be “The Street Fighter 6 Teaser is a Baffling Piece of Marketing Material.” I just don’t get it. I don't know what they were hoping for here or what kind of reaction they expected.
I learned in high school English class that compare and contrast is the ultimate essay writing technique, and I can only assume nothing has changed since then. I think it's easier to understand the shortcomings of SF6's teaser by putting it next to a more successful reveal trailer. Let’s look at the Guilty Gear Strive trailer that dropped at EVO 2019 where people absolutely lost their minds. Take a second to watch this: Why did the Strive trailer succeed? First we have to look at context. Up until the trailer dropped, we weren’t even certain a new Guilty Gear was in development. People suspected it might be, but we had nothing concrete to go on. That’s the first big difference between the two reveals. Even if the Strive teaser was just a 10 second video with a guitar riff and the game’s logo, people would have been excited—Arc System Works confirming that the game was in development was new information. On the other hand, we’ve known for a fact that Street Fighter 6 is in development for a while now. Its existence isn’t news, and it certainly isn’t enough to carry a trailer.
Why did the Strive trailer succeed? First we have to look at context. Up until the trailer dropped, we weren’t even certain a new Guilty Gear was in development. People suspected it might be, but we had nothing concrete to go on. That’s the first big difference between the two reveals. Even if the Strive teaser was just a 10 second video with a guitar riff and the game’s logo, people would have been excited—Arc System Works confirming that the game was in development was new information. On the other hand, we’ve known for a fact that Street Fighter 6 is in development for a while now. Its existence isn’t news, and it certainly isn’t enough to carry a trailer.
The SF6 promo clocks in at 39 seconds compared with Strive’s 1:21. Comparing the two video lengths is kind of wild to me. While the Strive trailer is longer, we’re not talking orders of magnitude in difference here. In its 39 seconds, the SF6 teaser tells us almost nothing. It told us:
SFVI is in development
Luke is in the game
Ryu is in the game
As I mentioned earlier, we already knew #1. Capcom had also already stated their intent that Luke would be the face of SF6, so we knew #2 as well. While we didn’t know #3 with absolute certainty, putting five bucks on Ryu being in the next Street Fighter game is a pretty safe bet.
What did the Strive reveal trailer tell us?
Strive is in development
Sol is in the game
Ky is in the game
What the game actually looks like (showed in-engine footage)
The planned release year
A new mysterious bad-ass samurai guy is in the game holy shit
A few of these aren’t huge surprises (Sol/Ky being in the game), but everything else was new and exciting. I don’t think it’s really necessary to even dive into each list entry; it speaks for itself.
All of this being said, I’m not saying SF6 is going to be bad—that’s impossible to know at this point (we still haven't seen it). What I am saying is that this teaser doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. I guess the SFVI teaser did confirm hot Ryu is going to be his canon appearance in the game, so at least there’s that.