What will Street Fighter 6's big reveal trailer actually look like given Capcom's recent track record for announcements?
It's looking more and more like Street Fighter 6 is set to be unveiled to the world later this weekend, but what will our first peek at Capcom's next flagship fighting game actually look like?
Will there be gameplay? Just a teaser? A logo? Well, luckily Capcom's stuck closely to a particular pattern and style for their big game announcements in recent years, so we can already kinda piece together how things should go.
Taking a look back at the company's reveal trailers over the past 4 or 5 years, they've adhered to very similar tricks, flow and aspects for Resident Evil, Monster Hunter and Devil May Cry.
The current pattern appears to have started in full in 2018 with Resident Evil 2's remake and Devil May Cry 5, which set the stage for almost everything that wasn't a compilation or re-release since.
They generally begin fairly ambiguously, leaving viewers unsure of what the game actually is at first by including shots of the scenery without any main characters or identifying objects.
We don't expect that will be the case with the next Street Fighter, however, considering there's no reason to obscure what game or series it is.
Those other titles were almost always revealed at large multi-publisher events like E3 and Nintendo Directs where the anticipation and surprise can catch more people off guard.
This countdown announcement is seemingly taking place at the end of the Capcom Pro Tour 2021 Final, which is focused solely on Street Fighter.
Once they do pull back the curtain on what game it is, the trailers transition to either an action-filled cutscene or multiple action shots to set the tone.
What this would probably be for Street Fighter 6 is either a scene from Story Mode, part of a Super animation or a unique CGI visual of what the game is kinda focusing on like they did with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.
The big question on everyone's mind though is will we see gameplay?
Luckily, the answer to that is more than likely yes since the second half or last third of Capcom reveals in recent years either focus on quick cuts of gameplay or back and forth between cutscenes and gameplay.
Grandpa Dante on a motorcycle? Hell yeah!
Then of course close out with the big stinger at the end. Perhaps a boss character or surprising world warrior return?
Looking back further at Street Fighter 5's original teaser trailer, we suspect Capcom may very well take a similar approach for Street Fighter 6's reveal by starting with a focus on the series' community — since they don't need to hide it.
Most of Capcom's trailers nowadays have a runtime of 2.5-3 minutes, so there will hopefully be a good chunk shown to sink our teeth into.
Assuming that they've retained their leading roles from SF5, we think there will be a message at the end from Director Takayuki Nakayama and Producer Shuhei Matsumoto since they've engendered themselves with the Street Fighter community in the Season 5 seasonal updates.
They'll probably speak for like a minute or two going over some key points and design elements shown or teased as well as their mission for the game before closing out with a date or time period to look forward to for more information.
Considering the CPT Final is the backup to the now-canceled and much larger Capcom Cup 8 and the fact that it's set to go down super late on Sunday, however, there is also a decent chance that Capcom could have scaled back their initial plans.
The developers could instead focus on a shorter teaser with some or most of the elements mentioned above followed by a date in the near future for the full reveal.
Either way though, we should be getting at least a good bit more than just a logo shot... assuming you know that this truly is Street Fighter 6 of course and not some other curveball.
