Update: Street Fighter 5 Battle Director dropping in to talk about Rose, show Season 5 balance changes and 'mechanics' for Winter Update next week
What is Season 5 going to look like?
Update: The Steam announcement page for Street Fighter 5 includes added details that weren't present in other statements, including that Rose will be present in some capacity. That text can be found in the original story below now.
After nearly six months of waiting, Capcom finally announced when they're going to showcase Dan Hibiki and and what Season 5 is going to have to offer Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition players, and now there's some further revelations about how deep they're going to go.
The official Street Fighter Twitter account revealed SF5's Battle Director Ryuichi "Woshige" Shigeno will be joining the Winter Update stream to discuss balance changes an 'mechanics' which is not something Capcom is generally known to do.
We've known for quite some time that SF5 would be seeing a new battle mechanic for Season 5, but it's interesting to note that they use the plural form in the post — and it's not the first time Capcom has done so either.
That doesn't mean we're probably getting two new mechanics, but it could point to some existing features getting some kind of rework for what will probably be Street Fighter 5's final form.
The fact that Woshige is coming in to talk balance changes further shows that the developers are looking to be more open with SF5's players, and it's something we've seen other developers like NetherRealm Studios and Iron Galaxy do in the past with very positive community reception.
#SFV Battle Director Shigeno-san joins the show alongside Director Nakayama-san and Producer Matsumoto-san.
— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) February 3, 2021
What new balance changes and mechanics is he cooking up for us…?
🔔 https://t.co/Go1l4amv9f
📆 Feb 11, 2021
🕘 9:00AM PST#SFVWinterUpdate pic.twitter.com/m6ZiIeAKZn
"We are happy to announce we're creating our next digital event, which is being called 'Street Fighter 5 Winter Update!" reads the Steam post in part. "Tune in on February 11th at 9 am PST for new details on Season 5, including more information about Dan, Rose, a new battle mechanic, Esports news, and more!"
Normally, the closest we'd come to something like this in SF5 would be the Winner Stays On streams that showcased new characters just before they released though balance changes were never really much of a focus unless they were included with the fighter update.
As for what those balance changes will entail, we previously got a taste of what's likely to come considering Akuma's Garuda costume trailer showed that he was no longer able to perform one of his signature side-switching setups that wasn't added to the game with the outfit.
Capcom hasn't said whether the new mechanic will be offensive or defensively focused, but our own polls on the subject showed that many are looking for new Critical Arts, a combo cancel system or something like a combo break.
The Winter Update stream for Street Fighter 5 is going down next Thursday, February 11, at 9 a.m. PT on the various Capcom Fighters channels.
Woshige will be joined by SF5's director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto along with more special guests.
Season 5's update itself almost assuredly won't launch until after the Capcom Pro Tour 2020 Season Final which is scheduled to take place Feb. 20–21 as a replacement for Capcom Cup.
Rose mentioned by Forticon.
