Street Fighter 5 to launch with 16 characters, all DLC will be free

Capcom held a panel discussion yesterday during the EVO championships and spoke about some of the details pertaining to Street Fighter 5. The developer stated that their will be a total of 16 fighters at launch and those will include four brand new fighters to the franchise. As exciting as that is, perhaps the most interesting announcement by Capcom is that all future DLC and fighters are going to be completely free and you will not be required to purchase any additional discs to unlock them.

Now, Capcom isn't exactly known for its user friendly DLC practices in the past. With games such as Street Fighter 4, players were forced to buy entire packs of content even if one fighter was all they wanted to use and most time had to wait upwards of a year to get that content. The company stated they are focusing on Street Fighter 5 as more of  a service and its own platform for the future. The only thing you will have to do in order to unlock additional content is to play the game and earn fight money. This will only cost you your time and require no real money. The more you play, the more fight money you will earn allowing you to purchase more content. If you like, Capcom noted, there will be an option to use real cash in order to buy Zenny which you can use to unlock all the content as well but reiterated it is only an option.

Marketing Director Matt Dahlgren told Eventhubs that "Moving forward, all balance and system adjustments will be made available for free to players. All post launch gameplay related content can now be earned by playing the game. This time around, if you're dedicated and you play the game continuously, you will be able to earn that content for free,"

With 16 initial launch characters and 4 brand new, let's do a little math here. We already have seven confirmed characters with Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, M. Bison, Birdie, Nash and Cammy. That leaves nine left with E. Honda pretty much a lock as the next reveal with the teaser at the end of the Ken reveal trailer. There are of course four rumored characters that have been heating up lately which are Alex, Karin, Urien and R. Mika. This would be a total of 12 then all  we need is the four remaining new characters. (Editor's Note: New character Necalli was also revealed at EVO 2015. Find out more here).

If those are indeed the launch fighters, is it acceptable for you? After all, classics like Dhalsim, Vega and Balrog are absent but of course could always be added in later on as part of the free dlc. Let us know who your favorite all time Street Fighter V character is.

Street Fighter 5 is set exclusively to launch on PS4 in 2016.