The Akuma Update for Street Fighter 6 Is Out

The long awaited Akuma patch is finally out. While it does add a classic character to Street Fighter 6, the real highlight here are the balance changes that people have been waiting for since the game's release. Capcom went for a new strategy of letting the game breathe for a whole year before releasing a major balance update that promises to shake things up in a more polished and thoughtful way.

But before that, there are some important general changes to mention:

• Akuma, obviously. It's a full package, with 3 costumes, new stage, new avatar items, World Tour missions, arcade mode mini-story, and some other miscellaneous items, titles, and commentary lines.
• Ed, AKI, and Rashid are receiving their 3rd costumes as well.
• Jukebox, which includes music from SFII-V series, and Street Fighter Alpha series, no EX, unfortunately. Each pack cost differs, but be ready to lay down roughly 4k Drive Tickets per bundle.
• New avatar gear: Kiko Panda Mask, Animal Feet, Fox Tail, Cat Tail.
• Training mode has new QoL improvements: You can set the dummy to do the new Drive Reversal on recovery, you can save the opponent dummy, Combo Damage on Attack Data can be reset, Action Timing Display position can be adjusted, and shortcuts can be used more easily when matchmaking is enabled.
• Versus mode walkout intros can now be skipped, and the character select screen advantage settings can be navigated with a mouse.
• Extreme Battle now features perfect indicators, and double completion indicators, for when both opponents complete their objectives simultaneously.
• Replays from previous versions can't be used, and if saved won't be able to be played.
• Older data from fighter profile will not be displayed.
• Previously, you couldn't buy bundles if you own one of the items within it already, now you will be allowed to do so.
• The colors 3-9 bundles for the default 18 characters will be replaced at the beginning of June 2024.
• Oto Ranger and EX Troopers BGM have been added to the music player.
• Network: Intermediate server entry requirements have been eased for battle hub, Online Fight Request's auto reconnection is now easier if the connection is interrupted when matchmaking online.
• Ranked matchmaking has been adjusted to match people closer in skill to each other, and Master players can only place as low as Diamond 1 now.
• Casual matchmaking will try to avoid matching you with the same opponent repeatedly.
• Lots of smaller bugfixes.

Wow, that was a lot, and it still pales in comparison to Battle Changes, which you can find here. If you've been around for the gigantic lists of changes that came out near the end of SFV's lifespan, you know what to expect.

While they omitted it in the document, Capcom was nice enough to provide rather extensive commentary on the nature of these changes. If you don't want to examine minute details of frame data and hitboxes, this is a great way to quickly get an understanding of what this patch aims to accomplish, and why certain nerfs and buffs were applies to every character.