The Street Fighter 5 beta isn't working

UPDATE: Beta postponed indefinitely, won't count as pre-order incentive.

News by Wesley Yin-Poole Former Editor-in-Chief

Updated on July 28, 2015

UPDATE 28/07/2015 2am: Street Fighter 5's beta test ended up being a colossal failure, mostly on account of the fact that it did not work. After launching on 23rd July, Capcom faced many issues resulting in the servers being taken offline off and on. As such, Capcom has decided to pull the whole hog and reinstate it later once the kinks have been worked out.

"Capcom offers its sincerest apologies to everyone who participated in this first beta test," the publisher said on its Capcom Unity blog. "While the purpose of a beta is to work out these type of issues, it was very clear that the issues we faced were more severe than we were prepared for. After three days of testing, while we were making progress and collecting valuable data, we felt the majority of players were not having a good experience, and the best course of action would be to take the servers offline for extended maintenance. We will be postponing our first beta phase until we believe the experience is going to be a positive one for players."

Capcom further clarified that this botched beta test will not count as one of the pre-order incentives for the upcoming fighting game. "We are still working out the specifics on the incentive, but can confirm that connecting to, or not being able to connect to the initial beta, will not be a factor in receiving this incentive," Capcom clarified.

As such, there will still be at least three full beta test prior to the game's release next year on PS4 and PC.

Furthermore, Capcom noted that it's working on a "worthwhile in-game incentive" for those who participate in the first real beta test, whenever that happens. "While we can't confirm specifics just yet, we will have more details on this in the coming weeks," Capcom teased.

"The whole team here is very disappointed that we were unable to deliver a proper beta experience this time. Thank you so much for your continued support, and we promise that we will have a better experience for you with the future betas."

UPDATE 24/07/2015 3.04pm: Capcom UK just sent us over a statement on the Street Fighter 5 beta's ongoing woes. In short, they're bringing it down again for "extended maintenance" - and there's no word when it will be back up.

Here's the statement:

(1/2) The SFV closed beta test is entering a period of extended maintenance in order to fix issues preventing the beta from loading.
— Capcom Europe (@CapcomEurope) July 24, 2015

(2/2) Apologies to all players who have eagerly awaited playing the game. Please stay tuned for updates on when the beta will reopen.
— Capcom Europe (@CapcomEurope) July 24, 2015

ORIGINAL STORY 24/07/2015 9.16am : The PlayStation 4 Street Fighter 5 beta launched in the early hours of this morning and quickly fell over.

I've been trying and failing to log in to Capcom's game server since late last night. Bah.

The game is now down for maintenance, with Capcom working on a fix. Street Fighter main man Yoshinori Ono apologised for the problems and said the maintenance should be done and dusted by 11am UK time.

I deeply apologize for causing you so much trouble this time.We need a little more time for fixing problem until 7pm(JPT)/3am(PDT)/11am(GMT)
— Yoshinori Ono (@Yoshi_OnoChin) July 24, 2015

It's a beta, so it's hard to get too grumpy about this. And Capcom has said it'll extend the beta to make up for the downtime.