Capcom has announced that Street Fighter 6 will be the sole game of next year's Capcom Pro Tour, with a record-breaking prize of $1million.
Capcom Cup 9 came to a close over the weekend, with my fellow Birdie main – the Dominican Republic’s MenaRD – becoming the first two-time Capcom Cup champion, as well as being the final champion for Street Fighter 5 . While Capcom announced in advance that there would be no new reveals for the upcoming Street Fighter 6 at the event, it did say that the 10th year of the Capcom Pro Tour will be held exclusively in Street Fighter 6, with a record-breaking grand prize.
The prize pool was announced on the @StreetFighter Twitter account, which says that the lucky winner of Capcom Cup 10 will be taking home $1million, with the entire prize pool for the Capcom Pro Tour being $2million. That makes it the biggest prize pool in the history of fighting games, with the previous record being held by Brawlhalla Esports 2022’s $1.32million across the season. Capcom is clearly confident in Street Fighter 6 as this $2million prize pool dwarfs the previous Capcom Cup record of $380,000 for Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition.
Bison Dollars
Not only is this great news for Street Fighter pros, but also for the wider fighting game community. Fighting Games have historically had way smaller prize pools compared to other esports. According to Esports Earnings, Brawlhalla is the highest paid fighting game competition of all time, giving out $3.6million across 648 tournaments. Even then, Brawlhalla still only ranks 45th on the list of highest-paying esports.
Brawlhalla isn’t even really a part of the core fighting game community – It has never shown up at EVO, which is the biggest fighting game tournament every year. The highest paying traditional fighter is Tekken 7 which ranks at 60 with 2.5million over 385 tournaments.
I’m happy to hear this news, because it further reinforces how confident in Street Fighter 6 Capcom seems to be. Street Fighter 5 – despite getting too much hate in my opinion – was a bit of a flop at launch thanks to its barebones modes; especially in the single-player department. It eventually grew into a fantastic game, but it was too little, too late for the game to fully recover.
Ever since Street Fighter 6 was revealed there's been a different mood coming from Capcom; it feels like the company is ready for this series instalment to be a hit. It's shown that it's learned its lesson from Street Fighter 5 by showing off the in-depth Street Fighter 6 single player mode World Tour, as well as a robust multiplayer mode, which – if the beta is any indication – has a solid online netcode.
While fighting games are criminally overlooked when it comes to Game of the Year discussions, Street Fighter 6 already looks like a contender for the best game of 2023.
