2017 marks Street Fighter's 30th anniversary, and if series producer Yoshinori Ono is to be believed, Capcom has some plans in the works for the fighting series' big birthday.

Ono told IGN that we should expect "one or two surprises" around E3 or San Diego Comic-Con. We know that the developer plans to release new characters for Street Fighter V in 2017, but it would be surprising if the announcement Ono is referring to is one of those characters. 

Ultra Street Fighter 2 was recently announced for Nintendo Switch and is said to "kick off" the 30th anniversary celebration, so maybe we'll see a port of that on PC? The word "surprises" makes it sound like it could be something completely new, however. Nothing has been confirmed, but we'll be sure to keep you updated as we learn more.

One Capcom fighting game that you can expect on PC this year is Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite. The latest crossover comes with 2v2 matches, as opposed to the series' trademark 3v3 bouts. Characters confirmed so far include Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Morrigan, Ryu, and Mega Man X. 

A brand new Street Fighter game is here. Over the next year and beyond, Street Fighter V will be taking its place front and centre of the competitive fighting game scene as it becomes the flagship game of the Capcom Pro Tour. It is being positioned as the game to elevate all things fighting games to the next level, much like Street Fighter IV before it—only this time things like streaming and esports and Twitch are actual things, rather than sounding like some deeply personal problems.

There is this notion that fighting games are difficult to get into, as a player and as a spectator, due to all of the different systems and tech skills going on that require a deep knowledge of the game to truly appreciate. This isn t entirely true. A lot of this comes from the fact that the popularity of competitive gaming has exploded during the lifetime of Street Fighter IV. All of the people hearing about how exciting EVO is are diving head first into watching a game that has had several revisions, balance updates and years of professional players finding out techniques that long time fans have grown accustomed to. There s just too much to take in, but that wasn t always the case. Street Fighter V is a new game, a simpler game, and a clean slate for everyone, new and old players alike. This is the best time to start following fighting games, if you ve ever been interested.

But where? I hear you all screaming at your monitors. Do not worry! I have put together this primer on how to watch professional Street Fighter: where to start, what to watch and a few useful places on social media to keep you up to speed. Some of you likely already know all of this and that s awesome—come back for the next column—but for all of you newcomers, check this stuff out and you ll be an expert in no time.

Where do I start watching?

There s obviously a whole load of Street Fighter content out there on the internet, but the best place to start is with the official Capcom Fighters channels—their Twitch and their YouTube accounts. Twitch is where all of the Street Fighter V Pro Tour events will be shown and YouTube is a great resource for matches and highlight videos. However, a really good place to actually start is the Winner Stays On Sessions stream, a weekly showcase of the best UK players playing against each other. In recent months they ve started to provide Pro Tour match/player analysis and attract some impressive guests. Capcom Cup commentators Logan Sama and F-W0rd tread the line between hype and actual analysis like champs and are a huge help if you re a newcomer and you re wondering what exactly you just saw and why it was so awesome.

The Capcom Pro Tour

This is where you ll be doing most of your Street Fighter V viewing over the next year. The Capcom Pro Tour is a series of events taking place all over the world where players battle it out to win prize money, but also one of 32 spots in the year end Capcom Cup and a shot at the lion s share of a $500,000 prize pool.

The tour is bigger than ever in 2016 and the setup has changed a bit. It s slightly more complex, allowing for more region-focused events, some online stuff being integrated into the live tournaments and opportunities for a greater spread of players to make it to the grand finals. To start with, there will be eleven Premier events, dotted across the globe, with the winning player automatically qualifying for the Capcom Cup. Now, the rest of the Pro Tour events are Regional Ranking events, with the winners qualifying for a Regional Final event (as well as two spots reserved for winners of a yet-to-be-announced online tournament) which is set to take place just before the Capcom Cup. The winner from each Regional Final will qualify for the Capcom Cup. Still with me?

So, that makes up 15 of the final 32. The top players in every tournament will also win points, with the top 8 regional scorers and the top 8 overall globally also qualifying for the Capcom Cup, leaving one final slot, which goes—obviously—to the winner of EVO 2016. It s a touch more complicated than last year s Pro Tour, but allows for greater opportunities for players who can t travel to international tournaments.

The Pro Tour s first event is Cannes Winter Clash, which takes place next weekend (26th-28th February), which adds an interesting wrinkle to the proceedings. The game is being released on 16th February and that means everyone—full-blown Ultra Street Fighter IV pros and fighting game amateurs alike—have a mere ten days to hone their skills. Expect to see plenty of upsets in these early days after launch. With 72 (!) events over the course of the year, there s going to be a Street Fighter V tournament going down somewhere almost every weekend.

Actually play the game!

Finally, and most importantly, is actually playing the game against other people. Anyone who has ever kicked a football in their life can watch say, Paul Gascoigne's unbelievable goal against Scotland in Euro 96 and understand how difficult that would be to perform themselves and appreciate the level of skill and talent that allowed him to pull it off. Watching high level players duke it out with a couple of knowledgeable commentators feeding you information is going to be some help, but knowing how impressive something really is comes from your own personal understanding of the game.

Get some pals together to play regularly and you ll soon find yourself getting better as you find ways to beat one another. Sure, there s a story mode coming and all sorts of single player content, but fighting games are about challenging another player to see who is the best, and anyone can relate to that simple one-on-one winner-takes-all expression of combat. It is why watching fighting games is so entertaining.

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PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

This weekend is all about DreamHack Winter, which is happening right now in J nk ping, Sweden. There's top-quality Dota 2, CS:GO, Hearthstone, and more to be watched: so much that you'll have a hard time keeping track of them. Don't worry, though! Thanks to the magic of 'doing lots of esports in the same building', you can listen to a bit of CS:GO casting while watching Dota.

Here's what's happening.

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Dota 2: ASUS ROG DreamLeague Season 4 Playoffs

A spread of international Dota 2 talent compete for a share of $150,000 at DreamHack. Frankfurt Major champions OG are taking part, as are ESL One New York winners Vega Squadron. The majority of this bracket is taking place today, Friday the 27th—but the lower bracket finals and grand finals are both taking place tomorrow. Play starts at 14:00 CET (13:00 GMT/05:00 PST) and you can watch it all on Twitch.

It is guaranteed to be very Dota: but will it be as Dota as 2013, when the finals took place during a Darude concert?

No. That is impossible.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: FACEIT 2015 Stage 3 Finals

$250,000 on the line in a single day. After Thursday's group stages, four surviving top-flight CS:GO teams will play the semi-finals and finals on Saturday. Between Team SoloMid, Virtus.pro, Fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas there's a huge amount of talent on display here. Play starts 14:00 CET (13:00 GMT/05:00 PST) and you'll find the livestream here (and also in the background of the Dota stream.)

Hearthstone: DreamHack NVidia Grand Prix

Running throughout the weekend, this is an open tournament with a $40,000 prize pool. It'll start with a Swiss format (no eliminations, players earn points to determine standing) followed by an elimination bracket. Anybody can enter, but they'll be up against some of the best players in the world—including Worlds champion Ostkaka. Watch on the official streaming site.

StarCraft II: DreamHack ROCCAT LotV Championship

The competitive scene is still developing around the changes brought in by Legacy of the Void, so this tournament is one of your best opportunities to see new strats in action. Rob Zacny wrote  this article earlier in the week about changes you're likely to see, but find out for sure this weekend as a roster of European players (plus invited Korean greats) click on stuff really quickly for $50,000. Play is ongoing, with the remaining matches taking place tomorrow from, you guessed it, 14.00 CET (13.00 GMT/05:00 PST). Once again, the place to be is the official streaming site.

Ultra Street Fighter IV: Capcom Pro Tour

Dreamhack is a premier stop for the Capcom Pro Tour as it continues its journey around the world. A share of $250,000 is on the line, with 32 players in contention from all around the world. A great opportunity to see some top-quality Street Fighter—and get excited for next year's SF V. Group stage play begins on Saturday at 11:00 CET (10:00 GMT/02:00 PST) and continues until the end of the day. Watch it here.

League of Legends: 2015 International Wildcard All-Stars

Believe it or not, there's something happening this weekend that isn't happening in Sweden. Melbourne, Australia will host LoL's first-ever Wildcard tournament in order to determine which teams represent the Wildcard regions at the All-Star Event in a couple of weeks. The format is pretty unusual: each region's All-Star team is assembled by player vote and play will take place across multiple mode, including standard 5 vs. 5 Summoner's Rift, 1 vs 1, and a player-voted mode. Play started on Thursday and runs through to the end of Saturday. Here's the stream.

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PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

BlizzCon is behind us, and the League of Legends World Championship has become a memory. Things are relatively quiet in the land of CS:GO and StarCraft II as Dreamhack Winter approaches, and the Smite scene is deep in preparation for the Super Regionals in Atlanta next week. Dota 2 takes centre stage this weekend, then, as the first-ever Major gets underway in Frankfurt. If you are not a fan of world-class wizard-clicking, we ve got North American CS:GO, a little Hearthstone, and some Ultra Street Fighter IV.

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Dota 2: The Frankfurt Major

The group stages for the Frankfurt Major are running now and continue tomorrow. Nobody is getting eliminated this weekend, but these games will determine who begins next week s main event in the lower bracket, a single game from elimination. It s been an exciting tournament so far, with upsets within the first couple of hours. Play begins at 10:00 am GMT/02:00 am PST and continues throughout the day. You can follow the games on Twitch or via the official Dota 2 streaming site. Need more information? Check out our guide.

Counter-Strike Global Offensive: iBUYPOWER Cup

The best North American CS:GO teams go to war for a slice of $100,000 at the Santa Ana eSports Arena. This is a chance to see a different scene duke it out, and an opportunity for US fans to finally get to watch some pro Counter-Strike on their own timezone. Games will be broadcast on Twitch throughout the weekend. A schedule isn t available yet, but you ll hopefully be able to find more information on the official site when the event is underway.

Hearthstone: SeatStory Cup IV

Only a week after the World Championship at BlizzCon, the Hearthstone scene is still going. Freshly-crowned champion Ostkaka will join plenty of other pros in Germany for a shot at $10,000. Play has been running for a couple of days already and will conclude on Sunday. The games begin at 13:00 pm GMT/05:00 am PST and will be livestreamed right here.

Ultra Street Fighter IV: Capcom Pro Tour Asia Finals 2015

This is a chance to see some very high level Street Fighter with lots of interesting matchups. The Pro Tour Asia Finals will be played in a round-robin format, meaning that everybody will play everybody else: no early eliminations here. The tournament runs all weekend in Singapore, with play beginning at 04:00 am GMT/20:00 pm PST—subtract a day for the US times, because timezones. You can watch all of the games here.

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PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

As is their wont, the chaps behind the latest Humble 'Massive Publisher' Bundle have made it that bit sweeter, adding Resident Evil 4 and Remember Me to the Capcom Bundle, which was already tempting.

You'll have to beat the average (currently $9.07) to net them both, alongside Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil Revelations and the excellent Devil May Cry reboot. Fork up $15 and you'll also get the Untold Stories DLC for RE5, plus Street Fighter 4.

If none of those appeal, paying just $1 gets you Strider, Resident Evil Revelations 2, Lost Planet 3 and Bionic Commando Rearmed. Phew! I've lost count of the amount of games I've picked up in bundles that are gathering virtual dust in my steam library. Still, it's worth it for all the times I've had a random urge to play something and discovered I already own it.

The port of RE5 was a massive improvement over the initial release of RE4, but this looks like 2014's improved HD re-release. If like me you've never actually played any of the games in the series, this seems like a good opportunity to jump in. Remember Me is also worth checking out: its time travel mechanics inspired the same team to make Life is Strange—the final episode of which came out yesterday.

I love how everything about the humble bundles over the years has got less and less humble. It's kinda hard to be when last year you raised $50 million for charity alone, and goodness knows how much more since then given their relentless expansion. Not that I'm complaining: everyone seems to be winning.

Capcom still has a pretty good hit rate, and that's why the latest Humble Bundle is so appealing. It discounts many of their recent hits including the DMC reboot, Ultra Street Fighter IV, and *cough* Resident Evil 5, offering them up for practically nothing. On top of that, the $1 tier is the best I've seen for ages. Chucking a single simoleon Humble's way will get you Strider, the first episode of Resident Evil: Revelations 2, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, and Lost Planet 3, which isn't quite as bad as people like to make out.

You might want to beat the average to get Resi Revelations 1, DmC, Resi 5 and some other, unannounced games. You might want to stump up $15 for Ultra SFIV and some Resi 5 DLC as well.

And, if you're a repeat Humbler, you might want to keep an eye on its upcoming monthly subscription program, which will offer a new set of free games every lunar cycle.

I was struggling to think of a way to write about Evo 2015 without my limited fighting game knowledge tripping me up, but luckily Capcom came to my rescue. They've made their Ultra Street Fighter IV free on Steam for the weekend, and (sorta) free games are something we can all appreciate. You can play USFIV for freesies for the next couple of days, and buy it for cheap if you fancy keeping it after that.

Also, hey, Evo 2015 is happening this weekend. The schedule for the big fighting game tournament is here in annoying PDF format, and the list of multiplayer biff-'em-ups this year includes Ultra Street Fighter IV (obviously), Super Smash Bros. Melee, Tekken 7 and Mortal Kombat X. There are a whopping eight Twitch streams covering the event over the next three days.

I wouldn't be surprised if Capcom use Evo 2015 to reveal some Street Fighter V titbits, possibly a new character or two. I'm hoping for Remy from Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, myself.

This weekend's free entertainment comes courtesy of Capcom. It's Ultra Street Fighter IV—the most Street Fighter IV of the four versions of Street Fighter IV. It's as Street Fighter IV as you can get, assuming Capcom doesn't release an Ultra Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition or Hyper Street Fighter IV: Revengeance, etc.

Whatever it's called, it does still seem to be about punching (and sometimes kicking) an opponent in complex and ostentatious ways. Should that be a thing that appeals, you can play USF4 on Steam for free until Sunday.

In addition, Capcom has a sale on their entire Steam catalogue. That includes a half-price discount on Ultra Street Fighter IV, as well as 66% of DmC and 80% off the flawed but interesting Remember Me. You can find a full round-up of deals through this link.

Ultra Street Fighter IV should have automagically been placed in your Steam library. You can install it through there, or on the USF4 Steam page.

Games for Windows Live is the gift that keeps on giving. First it was dead, then it was not dead, and now it's causing trouble from beyond the hypothetical grave in Capcom's Super/Ultra Street Fighter IV. Capcom announced that they were making the transition from GfWL to Steamworks a couple of months ago, and now that's it's happened all sorts of connection and lag problems are occurring. Ultra SFIV's Steam forums page is awash with posts detailing a cornucopia of issues, which mostly appear to be related to the game's netcode.

After a few worrying weeks where it seemed that the problems wouldn't be addressed, a representative for Capcom has taken to the forums to state that they're "aware of the online connectivity & perf issues with the game and are working to get them solved as quickly as possible. Our team will continue to monitor the threads for any other issues that may arise so keep the comments coming. We appreciate your patience and support."

A patch was issued a few days ago that appears to fix some of them, but it's clear there's still work to be done. In the meantime, if you have a problem with Ultra/Super Street Fighter IV since the switchover to Steamworks, the Steam Forums are the best place to let the developers know.

Cheers, Kotaku.

The list of Games for Windows Live games grows ever-smaller, which is a good thing, as if their brief (and subsequently deleted) support update last year was correct it'll be closing in July. Capcom had previously revealed plans to transition Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, and, for the preposterously initialled SSFIVAE at least, have now announced when that switch will take place.

"As Ultra Street Fighter IV is coming out soon for Steam, we are looking to transition our current GFWL users over to Steamworks in order to provide the optimal level of support across the board for PC Street Fighter fans," writes Capcom community manager Peter "ComboFiend" Rosas. "We ve been working behind the scenes to ensure that this change will be as seamless as possible, but for users who still wish to continue using GFWL, the game will still function as normal for the foreseeable future."

For users who don't still wish to continue using the service, you'll be able to transition to Steamworks from this Friday, 30 May. If you own SSFIVAE through Steam, you'll be prompted to transition from that date, with the client automatically transferring save files. Those with a retail copy of the game will be able to activate their CD Key through Steam. Unfortunately for the latter group, any DLC they'd bought through GFW Live will be lost. "Both paid and free DLC for the GFWL version will not be transferred over in this process," writes Rosas, "but Steam should not be affected."

As for Capcom's other GfW Live games, including Dead Rising 2 and Resident Evil 5, Capcom gave us the following statement: "While we do not have any information regarding changes to the GFWL service, all of our applicable titles continue to support the features and will function normally."

That does call into question exactly what will happen on the expected GfW Live shut-off date. We'll continue to pester Microsoft for a statement on the fate of the service.