Street Fighter 6's battle hub is a brilliant attempt to digitize the arcade experience

When Capcom revealed that Street Fighter 6 was going to be split into three distinct menu options that each lead to relatively separate experiences, I was curious – but I thought it was just a gimmick. Experiencing the Battle Hub in the beta has shown me that it's more than that; it's a way to honor the past. In real terms, the Battle Hub is simply a lobby system. Whereas in Street Fighter 4 or Street Fighter 5 matches were found through matchmaking systems that ran through regular menus, SF6 recontextualizes the wrapper around finding matches into a bizarre sort of Second Life-style, semi-MMO experience where you join a server and literally noodle around a 3D space. There's a bit of cross-over with other modes, too. The character you run around with is created for the single-player World Tour mode, which we're yet to see much of – though now we at least know that you can create some wonderfully frightening-looking protagonists for it with a surprisingly open-ended character. The Street Fighter battles you'll participate in, meanwhile, are straight out of the versus 'Fighting Ground' mode I've previewed before – just online, instead of off. Read more