Street Fighter 5 Getting Free Story Expansion in June, Final Beta Detailed

Capcom announced today that Street Fighter 5 will receive a free, expanded story mode in June. It will contain over an hour of "cinematic content" and fill in the storyline between Street Fighter IV and the new game. Watch the first trailer for the DLC below.

In a recent conversation with executive producer of Street Fighter 5, Yoshinori Ono, he explained to GameSpot how the expanded story component will differ from the story elements included with the game at launch.

"We have two approaches that we're actually taking," said Ono. "First and foremost, there are the character stories, which are really serving as a prologue in terms of getting people up to speed with what's happening in Street Fighter 5, and it's very similar to what you see in other Street Fighter titles--it has still screenshots, conversations, and banter between characters."

Describing the upcoming expansion, Ono added: "This is not going to be typical illustrations; this is going to have in-game models, everything will happen in real time, and it's also going to have an hour plus of cinematic content. To be very clear: we're going to give [this story expansion] out for free. So anybody who has purchased the disc and has the game will be getting this content for free via an update coming in June."

Ono also shared insight into the Street Fighter timeline at large, and how Street Fighter 5 connects to Street Fighter III: "I haven't talked about this previously, but in terms of where Street Fighter 5 is placed in the SF universe timeline, it's placed between Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter III. With Street Fighter 5, the concept that we're trying to accomplish is to wrap everything together--all six titles of Street Fighter together--cohesively."

Given Capcom's plans to support Street Fighter 5 for years to come, we asked whether or not there would be additional story expansions released down the road, to which senior product manager, Matt Dahlgren, noted that: "There's a possibility of that; we don't have anything planned just yet as we're just working on the first expansion, which is already very ambitious. But time will tell, if there's a lot of fan demand for things. There could be a likelihood in the long-term."

Capcom has also announced that it will be holding one final beta from January 30 at 12:01 AM PT (8:01 AM GMT) until January 31, at 19:00 PT (February 1, 3:00 AM GMT).

Street Fighter V will launch on PlayStation 4 and Steam on February 16.