The excitement surrounding the upcoming release of Street Fighter IV: Champion Edition has hit fever pitch as of late, with an endless barrage of teaser trailers revealing new fighters, MFi support and a whole host of features that are set to make Capcom’s mobile brawler a serious challenger amongst the App Store fighting game community. Only last week did Gamevice release a new video that showcased Street Fighter IV: Champion Edition being played with one of their eponymous devices, and today the accessory company have revealed that an exclusive Street Fighter Bundled Edition is available to pre-order on their website, with a release date of July 2017. As we discovered last week, the Capcom Mobile Facebook page has previously suggested that the latest mobile iteration of Street Fighter will launch in ‘early July’, so the shipping date of the Gamevice controller should tie in nicely with the game’s App Store launch. However, as eagle-eyed forum member ac166 has discovered, the fact that the bundle comes with a $5 Apple Gift Card strongly suggests that Street Fighter IV: Champion Edition will launch for $4.99 as a fully premium title.
While the news that Street Fighter IV: Champion Edition is a premium release may not be too big a surprise for the majority of fighting game fans on the App Store, as Capcom have suggested over the past few weeks that the six DLC characters will be released in the form of free updates. Furthermore, both the original Street Fighter IV ($4.99) and the Street Fighter IV Volt ($4.99) sequel were premium titles, so it makes sense that the Champion Edition would follow this trend. That being said, the App Store is an entirely different beast compared to its 2011 self, and with Injustice 2 (Free) and its fighting peers adopting a free-to-play approach it wouldn’t be the biggest stretch to expect Capcom to follow suit. The evidence pointing towards a premium release is encouraging, even if it is not definitive – until the game does launch in July, we won’t know for certain exactly what sort of Street Fighter we’ll be getting, even if these early signs are promising. Until then, feel free to pre-order the Gamevice Street Fighter Bundled Edition on their website, and hadouken down to our forum thread for more discussion on the upcoming Champion Edition.
