Street Fighter 6’s audio accessibility options praised by CBT players

Capcom recently held a closed beta test for their upcoming fighting game Street Fighter 6, with participants getting a chance to make avatars and try some matches before the game’s scheduled 2023 release. Players were also able to try out the game’s accessibility options which have been gaining a lot of attention from parts of the fanbase.

In the audio settings of the closed beta version, there was a menu labeled “In-Battle Accessibility Settings.” It’s here where players could find a wealth of options like an audio cue to show how far away you are from your opponent, sounds for high, medium, and low hits, and a Super Art indicator. Each of these audio cues could be toggled on or off.

The video in the above tweet helps make it easy to understand. One setting is a repeating beep that raises and lowers in tone depending on how close or far away you are from your opponent. Landing high, medium, and low attacks also produces different sounds. With these settings, visually impaired players can rely on audio cues to get a better understanding of the situation while playing, and players have been taking to social media to praise these features.

Additionally, while not accessibility features, Street Fighter 6 provides a lot of audio options in general. On top of general volume settings, attack sounds, footsteps, Super Art sounds, environmental sounds, system sounds, and so on can each be adjusted individually. Players are given a full array of audio settings to adjust to their liking.

In recent years, larger game developers have been more proactive about improving the accessibility of their games. While fighting games have been relatively late to the party, we have seen games like Microsoft’s Killer Instinct implement audio settings with accessibility in mind post-launch (Game Developer).

Tekken series chief producer Katsuhiro Harada also took the stage at ePARA Carnival 2022 Spring, an esports event held in Japan, in May of this year to show a build of Tekken 7 with accessibility settings they’ve been experimenting with. The build featured various color filters and settings to help with inputs. Harada says Bandai Namco is researching accessibility for not just the Tekken series, but to implement in other games going forward as well. The future looks promising for accessibility features in fighting games.

Street Fighter 6 is scheduled to launch on PC (Steam), PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S in 2023. Tekken 8 is also currently in development for PC (Steam), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-10-11 21:08 JST)