Capcom breaks silence on Street Fighter 5's Ibuki DLC delay, apologises for poor communication

Capcom has finally opened up about the delayed release of Street Fighter 5's third DLC character Ibuki, which was set to release in May, issuing an apology over its lack of communication. Despite being one of 2016's most highly-anticipated titles, Street Fighter 5's February launch failed to live up to expectations and was riddled with criticism over its lack of content, server issues and silence from developers regarding its upcoming content.

"We'll be the first to admit that we can improve our communication with the community, in terms of where our priorities lie around the game and status updates," Capcom wrote in a blog post on 2 June. "We plan to change that in the coming weeks and months and will work to quickly address topics that come up in the community as best we can."

According to Capcom's road map for Street Fighter 5's post-launch releases published in February, the game's third DLC character was originally set to release in May. Now into June, Ibuki has still not be released, sparking outrage among fans over Capcom's failure to inform players and provide an update about a new possible release date.

"We had originally aimed to release [Ibuki] in the last week of May, but in order to provide the best experience possible for our players, we decided to postpone her," Capcom said. "We are doing our best to release the content in the last week of June."

"We apologize to our players all over the globe for not communicating this change to our release schedule sooner. While we planned to talk about the timing of her release this week, it's clear that we should have been more upfront with everyone on the shift in timing."

The energetic kunoichi is expected to release in the last week of June together with the Cinematic Story Mode.

However, the Japanese developer and publisher does note that there will be further delays in upcoming Street Fighter 5 releases as well.

"Moving forward, the development team will continue to put quality of the product above all else," Capcom said. "This may result in additional delays in content deployment. That said, we will be much more transparent when plans change so all of our fans know what to expect."

In May, CEO Kenzo Tsujimoto admitted that "some aspects of Street Fighter 5 needed more polish, such as the lack of content and server issues at launch". The company also followed up with plans to revise development periods "for a small number of titles" in order to "prioritise completeness" over fixed development deadlines.

The blog post also mentions that the development team is currently looking into reports of input lag issues on the game's PS4 version and "will let you know as soon as [they] find out more". Capcom also adds that its latest solution has reduced rage quitting by about 60% and plans to continue rolling out measures to help curb the issue in the future as well.

Following Alex, Guile and Ibuki, Capcom plans to add three more characters — Balrog, Juri and Urien — to the Street Fighter 5 roster in the coming months, all of whom will be earnable for free through gameplay.