With the Battle Hub, the fighting game Street Fighter 6 gets a massive online lobby for the first time in the series. As producer Shuhei Matsumoto revealed, the Covid-19 pandemic was the forefather of the thinking behind the new system.
Next summer, Capcom will launch Street Fighter 6, the latest iteration of the popular fighting game franchise. As the previous closed beta phases have already shown, the developers around producer Shuhei Matsumoto have revised the online system in particular.
Arcade feeling in the pandemic period
Instead of an uninspired matchmaking HUD, the developers use the so-called “Battle Hub”, in which the players connect to their specially created avatars in a large lobby, chat with each other, fight against each other or simply watch others play.
Capcom’s “Battle Hub” is based on the classic feeling of an arcade in the 80s and 90s, where you played against friends and other people at arcade cabinets. Therefore, you can enjoy other classic Capcom games yourself or enjoy the music together at DJ sets.
In a recent interview with the Game Informer Matsumoto revealed where the idea for the Battle Hub came from. When the early concept phase of “Street Fighter 6” began in 2018, such a lobby system was not even thought of. The idea only came up with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which changed the way people interacted with each other.
Therefore, the Battle Hub was created to provide a replacement for the interactions that were missing due to lockdowns and other restrictions. At the time the system was designed, there was no telling how long the pandemic would dominate world affairs.
This is how Matsumoto came up with the idea of creating an arcade in “Street Fighter”, since many of the developers grew up with them and associate them with good memories. And that’s the feeling you want to recapture with the Battle Hub in this day and age.
More Street Fighter 6 news:
Street Fighter 6 will be released on June 2, 2023 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Those: Game Informer (via Dualshockers)
More Street Fighter 6 news.
Discuss this news on the PlayStation Forum
Links to Amazon, Media Markt, Saturn and some other retailers are usually affiliate links. If you make a purchase, we receive a small commission that we can use to finance the free-to-use site. You have no disadvantages.
