Street Fighter 6's developers almost unified M. Bison's complicated international naming, but gave up
"Players are going to want to call him M. Bison."
It turns out that the developers behind Street Fighter 6 had considered unifying the character names across all regions, but eventually gave up. This means that, at least for the foreseeable future, M. Bison will be Vega, and Dictator. Oh, and Balrog is still M. Bison in Japan. Call 'em what you like.
Speaking to VG247 at Summer Game Fest, both Takayuki Nakayama and Shuhei Matsumoto offered their insight into the dilemma. This was part of a larger interview which you can read right here!
VG247: Speaking of not being confusing to new players... and I've had this conversation with a few developers working on older Japanese games, like Sonic Team, because they've had the same problem with Eggman and Robotnik and all that... do you not just get tempted to say, screw it, and unify the names? To pick Vega or Bison and just say that's it worldwide from now on?
Takayuki Nakayama: So actually, I did personally want to unify the names, so that it's the same across all regions. We were going in that direction when designing and creating this character, too. But after thinking it through over and over again... we just came to the conclusion that Japanese players are going to want to call him Vega, and American players are going to want to call him M. Bison.
VG247: And some people will just keep saying Dictator!
Shuhei Matsumoto: Right. And it's a little difficult. So we just kind of... gave up. [laughs]
It's a little difficult.
As it stands, the names will remain different depending on what you got used to and where you grew up. I actually think this is a wonderful relic of an older time, something you just don't really see anymore. Let us know what you call each of the Street Fighter characters below!