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Street Fighter Duel coming to the West in 2023

Pre-registration is now open for Tencent’s Street Fighter mobile spin-off game, previously released in China and now coming to the West

Street Fighter Duel coming to the West in 2023

Street Fighter Duel, a new mobile game based on the famous Capcom fighting game franchise, is set to come to Android and iOS in 2023. The announcement was made via both a report on IGN and an official trailer and while the game is new to the West, it was previously released in 2019 solely in China.

Street Fighter Duel was developed by Tencent and sits at an interesting crossroads for the franchise. The game uses an RPG-battler format, special 3v3 matches, and an oddly non-canonical roster featuring a variety of new and original characters. With pre-registration now open for the game, including the prerequisite tiers of rewards available depending on sign-ups, the game is set to go live sometime in February.

The game is also being localised by well-known anime streaming service Crunchyroll's subsidiary Crunchyroll Games. With the description on their website describing the game reading “Are you ready to duel it out in the world of Street Fighter? Be prepared to travel the globe to recruit and level up iconic characters from across the Street Fighter series. With a team of champions, players will throw down in beautifully animated 2D brawls on all-new and iconic stages from Street Fighter’s past to take down Seth and the Shadaloo’s army of mech clones in an extensive story mode.”

Why now?

In the run-up to Street Fighter 6's hotly anticipated release, Capcom have been giving the brand a big push. With recent promotional efforts including WWE wrestler Zelina Vega debuting at the Women’s Royal Rumble in 2023 dressed as SF character Juri Han. A mobile game therefore fills a gap and seems a natural next step.

With Tencent already having a mobile game based on the franchise, previously released in China, it’s therefore only natural that Capcom would want to capitalise on this rather than devote their resources to a wholly new game. Although with the game having such a different format to the mainline games, it remains to be seen as to whether or not it will resonate with existing SF audience.

Capcom have also previously announced a mobile game based on their lesser-known but still popular Monster Hunter franchise.


Staff Writer

Iwan is a Cardiff-based freelance writer, who joined the Pocket Gamer Biz site fresh-faced from University before moving to the Pocketgamer.com editorial team in November of 2023.