http://www.polygon.com/2016/6/9/11889950/street-fighter-5-cinematic-story-mode-ibuki

The writer is bummed it is not the Street Fighter IV arcade mode. I'm happy it kind of sounds like a Neatherrealms story mode but single round fights and a lack of proper chapter markers for characters is a bit unfortunate.

Also the Zenny currency is dead. You are just going to directly buy content if you don't want to grind for it, which is probably a good thing. Prevents Capcom from creating the MS Point problem where you can never buy and spend the currency in the right amounts.

Oh man, Necalli is Ivan Ooze, and Unicron is blotting out the sun? That's a pretty good story mode.

Kinda tragic that fighting game story modes have only been good since MK9. They've always been super crazy and fun to read about.

Man, it's only just occurred to me how completely insane the character proportions are in this game. I think seeing them in proper cutscenes talking and stuff as opposed to flashy fighting animations is what's made them stand out all the more. Guile in particular just looks grotesque!

Oh, so this is still coming on time? Great!

Wonder if the person writing the Polygon piece enjoyed the Mortal Kombat 9 story mode. Single round fights is a bit of a bummer, but I guess make sense. Always liked how in Mortal Kombat the characters just jump back to their feet and it's round 2.

Man, I sorta wish WB would release an HD MK9. Maybe X is worth checking out, but kinda got no interest in those new characters or the different styles.

..... I'm alive to witness Street Fighter is now a lesser then Mortal Kombat.... I seriously don't believe what I'm seeing.

Details from Capcom's press site (note they specifically state late June 2016 as the release date):

JUNE UPDATE – “A SHADOW FALLS”

The Street Fighter V cinematic story expansion is titled “A Shadow Falls” and will be released in late June as free DLC to all players. The story is divided into five chapters and takes place between Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter III, bridging the events that happen in between the two stories. As the story unfolds, players will enter battles using each of the core 16 characters, in addition to the 6 (released and unreleased) DLC characters, each with their own unique contribution to the epic clash. “A Shadow Falls” marks the first time in franchise history that consumers will be able to play through this type of cinematic experience in a Street Fighter game.“A Shadow Falls,” depicts the ultimate battle between the evil Shadaloo organisation and the heroic World Warriors who rise up against them. Seven “Black Moons” are deployed by Shadaloo, granting M. Bison unimaginable power and enveloping the earth in total darkness. Seeing the moons mysteriously appear in the sky, Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li embark on an epic journey around the world to retrieve fragment pieces that are the key to stopping the “Black Moons” before it’s too late. Along the way, they encounter the rest of the World Warriors, each of whom have their own agendas and motivations in mind. The final battle between good and evil begins now… who will RISE UP?

• First ever cinematic story experience for a Street Fighter game, featuring high-resolution visuals using in-game character models and English and Japanese voice-over.

• Enter battles using each of the core 16 characters, in addition to the 6 (released and unreleased) DLC characters.

• 5 story chapters and approximately 4 hours of cinematic story content that includes player-controlled battles.

• 2 difficulty levels – play through the story on Normal mode and then unlock a more challenging Extra mode. Players will earn Fight Money for completing the story in both Normal mode and Extra mode.

• Special cameo appearances from other popular characters from the Street Fighter universe.

• Ibuki – the next character to be added to the SFV roster, Ibuki is a very tricky, technical character with loads of new ninjutsu tricks up her sleeve. Ibuki is a mobile character with various target combos, but now she has even more ways to mix-up the opponent with the ability to glide through the air and toss out ninja bombs, making it very difficult to predict where she will land and where her next attack will come from.

• In-game Currency Shop – The in-game store will be upgraded with the PlayStation Store and Steam real money purchase options as part of the June update. For players who want to purchase content like new characters, stages and costumes outright without Fight Money, the process will be familiar with purchases happening through the established first party infrastructures.

• Additional Content – Look for even more new content in the June update, including new stages, the premium Battle Costumes for purchase, and a few special surprises!

The story mode looks like some beautiful madness but i've always preferred the CG movies you'd get from games like Tekken and DOA. (which adopted this style unfortunately)

That said it looks a whole lot better than those animated movies you'd get in SFIV.

I'm sorry, you said the writer is bummed it's not the SFIV arcade mode? huh? Isn't that like being upset Challenges aren't the Training Room? Those two things just aren't the same. What about "cinematic story mode" translates to "Arcade Mode"?

IN ANY CASE

I'm uh... pretty impressed actually. What I expected was basically just a supped up version of the existing Story Mode, with those disgusting flash drawings replaced by cut scenes. This seems way beefier, with, you know, lots of animations and character models for non player characters. Am I also right in understanding that all the DLC characters are going to feature? Or, is it that as those characters release the story mode will be updated?

Single Round fights and "lack of character chapter" markers feels irrelevant compared to difficulty settings for me. Wonder what options there will be there, the existing Story Mode sorely lacks difficulties.

Zenny being dead is only sad because the name is Top 5 Currency Names, otherwise whatever.

I'd just like to point out that they've announced this update will come on Friday, which is July 1st.
Their June update (which contains their May content that was pushed back) is releasing in July.
Am I a jerk, or is this absolutely insane?

@spitznock: A jerk?

I mean it comes out at 12AM PDT July 1 so it's technically a 1-second delay and we get Balrog about a month early. It's not an ideal situation but in terms of the legacy of SFV, it should be pretty far down the list of things worth fretting over at this point. A DLC roadmap is great and all but if any game can't afford to have additional content come out half-baked, it's a fighting game. I don't care if Ibuki is late as long as she isn't bust.

@dudeglove: This fixes the content issue but SFV is still by no means a finished polished game. If you're fine with shitty UI, non-functioning stat pages, frequent match data server failures, terrible survival mode, battle lounges with no region filters that fail to show ping and poor matchmaking systems then I guess you'll enjoy it.

@dudeglove: I'll agree to non-functioning stat pages. Survival is kinda just survival so I dunno how you make that "good"? I don't jump into random battle lounges but I see ping when I play in GB lounges. I don't get what's bad about the UI though. Also matchmaking works fine for me so might be a region thing.

Basically I'd say wait until 2017 if you really need to know your stats, really want a "good" survival mode whatever that means, plan to play primarily with randoms and live in an area where fewer people play fighting games?

EDIT: Except Survival will still be survival and it may only get harder to find randoms to play online depending on what Capcom can do to pull new players in.

@ivdamke: So wait till a bunch of fluff (stats, data, and survival mode), and battle lounges with randos, is good?

Could be playing SF right now with people who are good at the game.

@starvinggamer: There's plenty of easy ways to make survival better, first and foremost being removing the RNG.

Late June = July 1st???

I was late to the party but I picked SFV up a couple of days ago for €25. I'm happy with the game for that price, had I bought it on release, I'd probably be shitting all over it like everyone else.

@dudeglove: Sure, but there will never be a SSF in the traditional sense, in that people that own SFV now will never have to buy a new disc, only new content. I'm sure that after this year's pro tour ends they'll do a big rebalance patch and update a thing here and there and maybe slap it all in a GotY equivalent box with the first year's DLC, but I wouldn't expect anything significant to change when it comes to the accoutrements.

If you never plan on playing SFV with humans, then by all means wait and you'll be able to save some money. If you actually want to play with friends or join in on GB lobbies (depending on where you live because latency), SFV now and SFV a year from now won't likely be much different.

@hankrazorbeard: pretty sure if it released july 1st in a mostly complete state it would have fared quite a bit better.

i started playing it, trying to git gud with karin (she does rule) then dropped off as theres so much else to play. is the community dead or is it kind of pointless to pick it up again now? (e: im not good at all with street fighter but want to be)

@hankrazorbeard: I don't think a single core player of SFV is upset that late June became July 1 when we're getting a bonus character out of it.

@ripelivejam:There's been dropoff to be sure and some people are reporting MM issues but Capcom is working on a fix for that which hopefully will be out soon/work? If you're looking for GB lobbies we're mostly plying Revelator right now but we do get some SFV going once in a while and I'm sure the Ibuki/Balrog patch will stoke those flames a bit.

But...my fight money!

Just wanted to say that.

There's been a slight dropoff in players overall, but I actually find matches much much faster now than I did at launch. The Giant Bomb community is fairly active, if you ask around in the fighting game thread you will definitely find people to play with/learn from. For the record, Street Fighter tends to have pretty good player retention. I was playing tons of USFIV with randos near the end of that game's lifecycle nearly a decade after SFIV launched.

If we're going by their original plan, Ibuki was planned as a May character, which would make the June character Balrog.
The idea that they're releasing him early is incorrect, but I'm sure Capcom is exceptionally pleased that the idea is out there.

I apologize (and it's a shame I feel the need to, but this is the internet where tone is impossible to decipher) if I come off as stand-offish, but they continue to drop the ball with this game, and even as someone who isn't "all about" his fighting games, it is tremendously frustrating to watch.

Ibuki was delayed but technically Balrog is on time, if not early. The plan was to have a character a month starting in March with Alex but not a character in June as that was to be the month of the cinematic story mode. I'm not saying Capcom didn't drop the all on some stuff but Balrog was scheduled to be released this month and likely originally planned to be near in the end of the month if they followed the same pattern of Alex and Guile.