Five new characters coming to Street Fighter IV

[UPDATE] Following the publication of this story, Capcom confirmed that the new update will be called Ultra Street Fighter IV. It includes five new characters and six stages, among other features, and will be released in 2014 digitally and at retail.

The original story follows below.

Capcom has announced that five new characters will be coming to Street Fighter IV during a panel this weekend at the Evolution Fighting Game Championships (EVO). The new characters, along with balance changes, will come out sometime in early 2014, with a name and trailer to be shown tomorrow before the Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition Finals.

Rolento, Poison, Hugo, and Elena will be joining the cast. Each of the four new characters has been included in Capcom's Street Fighter X Tekken. The fifth and final new character has never been in a Street Fighter game, Capcom said at the panel today. Along with the five new characters, six new stages are being added.

"I'm personally excited to be able to use Rolento in SF4," Capcom senior community specialist and former professional player Peter "Combofiend" Rosas said. "Yes, he was in SFxT, but SF4 and SFxT play very differently, so it’ll be a treat to use him against Seth, Hakan, and others that are not in SFxT."

Capcom is also balancing the entire cast of characters again so that they "will all be powerful," they said on today's panel. Capcom illustrated some improvements to Chun-Li, Dudley, T-Hawk, and Balrog, while showing off some of the downgrades to Cammy.

Capcom has posted and showed off some of the changes already implemented.

The new characters, stages, and balance updates will be released for $15 on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC simultaneously sometime in early 2014. Players without Super Street Fighter IV already can purchase the disc version with all the previous DLC costumes released, as well as future content to be discussed in the future. That will cost $39.99.

The name of the game and a trailer will be shown directly before the Super Street Fighter IV: AE Finals on Sunday evening, starting at 6:30 p.m. PDT.

For more on EVO 2013 and to watch the reveal tomorrow, check out GameSpot's eSports hub