Street Fighter 6 is getting a record $1 million tournament and the fighting game community can hardly believe it

Street Fighter 6 screenshot
(Image credit: Capcom)

The fighting game community has been pleasantly surprised by a Capcom Cup with a properly hefty prize pool, with the winner of the grand prize set to take home $1 million. 

As announced by the Street Fighter 6 developer on Twitter this week, the next Capcom Cup tournament, Capcom Cup X, will feature a total prize pool in excess of $2 million. If you're not familiar, the Capcom Cup is an annual esports event which has been running since 2013 and sees players compete in a range of Capcom's fighting games including Street Fighter, Tekken, and Marvel vs Capcom. 

For the next iteration of the event, players will need to be well versed in the company's upcoming release Street Fighter 6 - which is set to release on PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on June 2, 2023.  

The last Capcom Cup (IX) took place over the weekend (February 19) and was offering players the chance to win $300,000. While still a considerable amount of money, it looks like Capcom is attempting to take Street Fighter 6, and the company's esports efforts, to the next level by offering more than six times this amount at Capcom Cup X. 

The majority of the fighting game community (FGC) has reacted positively to this news, with several notable players taking to Twitter to praise Capcom for investing so much into the event. YouTuber Maximilian Dood has said that this is an especially big deal to those who have been part of the FGC since before the likes of Street Fighter 4 or even further back in the 90s when this kind of prize pool money would have been unimaginable. 

For some people though, this news is bittersweet. Instead of celebrating this win for Street Fighter, others are lamenting the fact that their favorite fighting games - such as Super Smash Bros. - are unlikely to get the same treatment. As one Twitter user puts it: "$2 million prize pool for Capcom Cup X... man, that's amazing [...] Imagine if Nintendo put in 1/5th that support into Smash."

Take a look at our Street Fighter 6 hands-on preview to find out everything you need to know about the upcoming fighting game. 

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Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.