Summary
- Some Street Fighter 6 fans are unhappy with the high price of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles skins, which cost $15 each, totaling $60 for all four.
- It's been suggested that Capcom should have bundled all four TMNT costumes together for $15, as it would have been a more reasonable price.
- The pricing of these avatar costumes raises questions about the future cost of collaborations with other franchises in Street Fighter 6 and the overall industry's monetization practices.
Some Street Fighter 6 fans are expressing discontent with the outrageous pricing of the freshly-announced and released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles skins. Launching in early June, Street Fighter 6 kicked off what's looking to be an excellent year for fighting games, with Mortal Kombat 1 in September and Tekken 8 also highly anticipated and rumored to release before the end of 2023.
In just over two short months since its early summer launch, Street Fighter 6 has already set up several collaborations with other franchises. The lead up to the launch of Capcom's own Exoprimal saw a trailer for a mechanical version of Ryu, the face of Street Fighter, to become available in the dinosaur-slaying third-person shooter this Fall. Additionally, classic Street Fighter characters Chun-Li and Cammy, as well as Luke and Ryu, have joined the battle royale battleground of PUBG. Most recently, as part of the annual fighting game event EVO, Street Fighter 6 revealed its next DLC character A.K.I, as well as a collab with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles around the release of the new animated Mutant Mayhem movie.
While it's nice to see games getting involved in more fun crossovers, fans of Street Fighter 6 are growing upset at the cost of these four TMNT skins. Twitter user UltimaShadowX pointed out that each individual TMNT costume costs $15 each. If one were to want all four turtle costumes, they'd need to shell out a whopping $60, the cost of Street Fighter 6 itself. This is especially upsetting when considering that these costumes are only for players' created avatars for use in World Tour mode or online Avatar Battles; players aren't able to equip these costumes with the established cast of Street Fighter 6 characters.
It would've made more sense for Capcom to bundle all four TMNT characters into one package for $15. While still quite expensive for a set of four avatar costumes, this path wouldn't have been as outrageous as making each one available individually for $15 a piece. This collab could've also just been a single turtle costume, with players being able to swap characters in the "change color" menu of World Tour clothing shops. While it's doubtful that Capcom will chop the prices of the TMNT skins now, perhaps it'll do so after the buzz surrounding the Mutant Mayhem movie dies down a bit, though this seems unlikely.
Since this is the first time characters from another franchise are coming into Street Fighter 6, it'll be interesting to see what the pricing will be for future collaborations with other popular franchises. From season passes to loot boxes and the current battle pass craze, monetization in gaming has been at the forefront of many serious conversations about the state of the industry for a while now. As Street Fighter 6's post-launch plans steam ahead with A.K.I coming in the Fall and at least two more DLC characters planned for early 2024, hopefully future avatar costumes won't cost as much as the price of the game itself.
Street Fighter 6 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.