Capcom Cup 2015 was a professional Ultra Street Fighter IV video game tournament that was held at Moscone Center in San Francisco on December 6, 2015. 32 players qualified for the tournament by winning one of the 16 Capcom Pro Tour Premier Events or by acquiring points at them. Kun Xian Ho won three of the Premier Events, coming in third place at the Capcom Cup. Many high-profile players, including Justin Wong and Bonchan, lost two consecutive matches during the early rounds of the Cup and were eliminated. The Grand Final was a match between Mad Catz' Daigo Umehara playing as Evil Ryu and Kazunoko playing as Yun, the latter winning the match 3–2.
Being sponsored by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the first time, Capcom Cup 2015 and its Pro Tour had a total prize pool of $500,000 USD, $120,000 of which was awarded to Kazunoko. Capcom Pro Tour 2015 saw a rule change where an automatic qualification would be eliminated and converted into points if the top four winners of a Premier Event had already qualified for the Cup.
The event was the last major tournament before Ultra Street Fighter IV would be succeeded by Street Fighter V, which was created with professional competition in mind.
2015 Capcom Pro Tour
Tour background
A series of qualifying events for the tournament were held throughout the year, known as the 2015 Capcom Pro Tour. The Pro Tour consisted of 16 "Premier Events", divided into four "regions", them being North America, Europe, Asia, and "Wild Card". The 16 Premier Events of the 2015 Capcom Cup were:
North America
Final Round – Atlanta, GA, United States
NorCal Regionals – Sacramento, CA, United States
SoCal Regionals – Orange, CA, United States
Community Effort Orlando – Orlando, FL, United States
Europe
Hypespotting 4 – Scotland, United Kingdom
Stunfest – Rennes, France
Milan Games Week – Milan, Italy
DreamHack Winter – Jönköping, Sweden
Asia
South East Asia Major – Bangkok, Thailand
Tokyo Game Show – Tokyo, Japan
Capcom Pro Tour Asia Finals – Singapore
Ultra Hyakkishu Cup – Tokyo, Japan
Wild Card
Evolution – Las Vegas, NV, United States
Canada Cup – Canada
Brasil Game Show – São Paulo, Brazil
KO Fighting Game Festival – Kuwait
$500,000 USD was made available as prize money for the entire Capcom Cup, donated by Capcom, Twitch, and new partner Sony. Each of the Premier Events had a prize pool of US$15,000 to be split among the Top 8 winners. The 2015 Evolution Championships, one of the "Wild Card" tournaments, had a prize pool of US$50,000, $20,000 of which was awarded to the tournament's champion. Capcom stated in their press release that they had three goals in mind for the 2015 season, the first being to "give fans more Street Fighter content to enjoy and look forward to," the second being to distribute tournaments and points more evenly across the different world regions, and the last being to increase tournament prize pools in order to incentivize more players to participate. In total, 261 players scored points in the ranking.
Tour summary
The Capcom Pro Tour kicked off on 22 March at Final Round 18 in Atlanta, Georgia. The tournament was won by Kun Xian Ho. The event was followed by NorCal Regionals on April 3, which was won by Daigo Umehara, and Hypespotting 4 on April 4, which was won by Kenryo "Mago" Hayashi. A wrong version of Ultra Street Fighter 4 was accidentally played during the first four matches of the NorCal's quarterfinals, which prompted tournament organizer Terry "Kineda" Ng to call for these to be replayed. In May, Seon-woo "Infiltration" Lee qualified for the 2015 Capcom Cup by making it to the finals of Stunfest 2015, where he lost to Daigo Umehara.
In May, 2015, Capcom released the PlayStation 4 port of Ultra Street Fighter IV, which was developed by SCEA's "Third Party Production group". This version of the game suffered from severe lag and glitches. Capcom announced that tournaments that are part of the Capcom Pro Tour would keep using older hardware until the issues were resolved.