The Street Fighter series is one of the oldest and most well-respected in gaming. Although the original Street Fighter is hugely influential, it’s also not the game most consider to have kicked off the franchise; that honour goes to Street Fighter II, which has received so many re-releases and remakes that it’s hard to keep track of them. Several more games would follow, and the Street Fighter series would quickly build a reputation for itself as one of the best and most well-crafted fighting franchises around.
Back in 2016, Capcom released what is, at time of writing, the latest Street Fighter game in the series, Street Fighter 5 (Street Fighter 6 has been announced, but it doesn’t yet have a release date). The game launched for PlayStation 4 and PC in February that year, with a version for arcade machines following in 2018. Re-releases and updates would, of course, launch in the following years, including the Champion Edition. One question remains, though: can you play Street Fighter 5 on PS5?
Is Street Fighter 5 playable on PS5?
Happily, the answer to this question, in a single word, is “yes”. You can, of course, play Street Fighter 5 on PS5. This is possible via the magic of backwards compatibility, which will allow you to simply slot your Street Fighter 5 disc into your PS5 and be playing the game in moments. If you’ve got a digital version of the game, no worries; all you need to do is download the game onto your new console and fire it up, at which point you’ll be playing. That’s all there is to it!
Will there be a native Street Fighter 5 version on PS5?
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that Street Fighter 5 will get a ntaive release on the PS5. This is because the game is arguably nearing the end of its life cycle; with Street Fighter 6 potentially just around the corner, Capcom isn’t looking to extend the life of Street Fighter 5, instead wanting to get fighting game fans hyped for the new instalment of its long-running fighting series. However, the PS4 version of Street Fighter 5 is more than playable, so if you love the game, just play it on PS5; you won’t experience any issues.
Does Street Fighter 5 play well on PS5?
When Street Fighter 5 launched on PS4, fans had a number of complaints about the game, despite a broadly positive reception. These included long loading times, the occasional moment of lag (which matters hugely in a game based around twitch reflexes), and some technical issues. Unfortunately, these issues will still be present when you’re playing on PS5, because the PS5 is effectively just emulating the PS4 version. However, when we tried out Street Fighter 5 on our PS5, we didn’t notice any significant problems, so you should have a pretty smooth experience with this excellent fighting game.
Does Street Fighter 5 have any special DualSense features?
In a nutshell, the answer to this question is “no, it doesn’t”. That’s because Street Fighter 5 isn’t running natively on the PS5, so it doesn’t know how to take advantage of any of the hardware that’s exclusive to the new console. Since the game is an emulated PS4 title, it also assumes you’re using a DualShock 4 controller, so it won’t take advantage of features like haptic feedback or adaptive triggers. It’s a shame, because we can definitely see how the brutal, crunchy fighting of Street Fighter 5 would work well with the DualSense’s features.
Is it worth picking up Street Fighter 5 now?
It depends. If you’re looking for a great Street Fighter game and you haven’t played the series for a while, then Street Fighter 5 is a great game. Since the release of the Champion Edition back in 2020 (and the extra All Characters Pack in 2021), Street Fighter 5 has revamped its somewhat lacklustre image at launch, bringing new expressiveness to characters and adding new ways to play them.
On the flipside, if you’re wondering whether it’s worth getting into Street Fighter 5 in a serious way now, the answer is more complex. Street Fighter 6 has been announced, and although it doesn’t yet have a release date, it’s almost certainly going to launch in the next year or two. If you don’t feel like you urgently want to play a Street Fighter game and you just want to wait for a more visually impressive iteration, Street Fighter 6 could be for you.
One caveat we would add to this is that Street Fighter games are often laughably dry in terms of content at launch. Street Fighter 5 launched with nowhere near enough content, as many users pointed out, with the requisite modes and characters being added as time went on. There’s a chance Street Fighter 6 will launch with the same issue, and if it does, you’re better off revisiting Street Fighter 5 in our opinion.
As you can see, the answer to “can you play Street Fighter 5 on PS5” is a pretty simple one: yes, you can, and you shouldn’t experience any issues with it at all. Despite the warning on the PlayStation Store that the game might not work perfectly, we can assure you that in our experience, it very much does. If you try out Street Fighter 5 on PS5, you’ll still be playing an extremely solid, satisfying, and technical fighting game with lots of characters to try out and gameplay depth to explore.
