With Street Fighter 5 set to release next week, we recently sat down with Executive Producer Yoshinori Ono to pick his brain on the game’s development.
Ono has been with Capcom for the past two decades, starting in the music department and working his way up to overseeing the Street Fighter franchise, alongside other games. He’s perhaps best known for getting Street Fighter 4 off the ground in the first place, and for his goofy promotional appearances.
If you’re on a desktop browser, click each image below to read what Ono has to say. If not, simply scroll down. 
Hot Ryu
One of the most popular costumes in Street Fighter 5 has been "Hot Ryu," a shirtless, bearded version of the series’ main character. Ono says the idea came from two places — old Street Fighter 2 artwork that showed Ryu with a beard, and the team thinking about him as a character traveling the world as a "hermit in the mountains." "If this guy’s traveling the world and wandering around," says Ono, "there’s probably going to be times when he’s not shaving, right?"
Laura
When thinking of new characters to add to Street Fighter 5, Ono says the team looked to territories that had lots of Street Fighter fans, but didn’t have a character to represent them. He says the decisions weren’t based on where the game sells the most copies, but where fans were the most passionate. And he found Brazil to be one of those places, so the team added Laura, seen here, as a Brazilian fighter.
Rashid
A third character in the team’s roster of attempts to appeal to new territories, Rashid came about after Ono spoke to Katsuhiro Harada, known for heading up the Tekken series. "He told me, ‘Hey, you should probably check out Dubai and the Middle East and what’s going on out there, because Street Fighter’s really big out there,’" says Ono. Harada’s team ended up putting a Middle Eastern character in Tekken 7 shortly before Ono’s team did for Street Fighter 5.
Dimps
For Street Fighter 4, Capcom hired Dimps, the long-running independent studio run by Street Fighter 1 creator Takashi Nishiyama, to handle the bulk of the game’s development, with Capcom Japan overseeing the game and providing support. For Street Fighter 5, the ratio flipped, with Capcom Japan accounting for about 60-70% of the staff, in part because the scale of the project required more people. "It was a complete shift," says Ono.
Active Discussions
Polygon Quarterly: Not for the Shareholders but for the Games
in Off-topic by sum_guy
Polygon forums close this Friday
in Off-topic by Chris Plante
Looking for more people to write Plight!
in Off-topic by Prinny
Welcome to the >new< forums!
in Off-topic by Prinny
What are you reading manga right now?
in Off-topic by lee87645312