Afro Republican
Banned
This generation has been a mixed bag for fighting games. If use use a comparable period for the 360/PS3 gen from 2006-2012 and XBox/PS4 gen from launch till now, we see somewhere around a 4505% decrease in sales for the fighting game market in total. let's look at some franchises this gen (and if they were around last gen we can compare their performance then and now) using the latest entries:
No when you look at this list, it's obvious one of the core reasons why fighting game sales have been down is due to lack of releases (or too many releases for a couple franchises), but another big reasons is just a lack of content or really dismissing concerns or suggestions from the fanbase.
Dead or Alive 6 at this rate will be lucky to sell much at all.
Street Fighter V took quote some time to make it to that 2.9 a big drop from SFIv which sold 3.4 million in less time, then the Super expansion added almost another 2 million units, and the Ultra Expansion, which brought back SFII fatigue syndrome and imo they should not have put out, brought in over 1 million. SFV has been trying to save itself for awhile and just isn't getting the attention. It launched bare bones with bad online, and several other issues tat pissed off fans and disinterested new comers. Sure, it's a better game now, but compared to where the game was at during launch that's not really much of an accomplishment. It also didn't even bother launching with a SP story mode.
King of Fighters went into 3D and did pretty well for the franchise. I suspect that if they continue improving their 3D formula they will have their first million selling KOF game soon enough.
Soul Calibur 6 has some pretty mild anticipation and it's launch sales weren't really good, it picked up a little but and then pretty much dropped off the planet. Another game that launched bare bones, and had several money snatching policies implemented, including microtranactions, to try and make up for sales. Well, that backfired.
UFC is UFC. If EA wanted to make a dramatic improvement with actual effort put in I'm sure this could have been as big a franchise as Fight Night was but EA is fine with modest adjustments for $60.
Injustice 2 tried to one up the predecessor with more content, better animations and cutscenes, more polish, and again more content. Also refined mechanics, a great story, and again, more content.
Naruto Ninja Storm 4 breaks the decline cycle due to this being the LAST Naruto Series game from Bandai. Likely due to the actual Naruto series being replaced by a new one that takes place in the future. No point in selling original Naruto series games when you want to sell merchandise for the new one. But as a result you end up with the developers listening to fans, taking feedback seriously, and creating the best and most content rich Naruto Storm game yet. Too bad they only did this with the last game but at least it ends with a bang.
Dragon Ball Fighter Z arguably did ride off the wind brought in by Xenoverse, also aided by the Brand Name, but the game was still solid enough to take that ride to a whole new level with over 4 million shipped. Likely Arcs best selling game of all time and it will likely remain that way for the companies life time to be honest.
Mvs.C Infinite suffered and suffers from a lot of the same problems that plaqued SFV and SC6. When you compare the Mvs.C series now to pre-MVC3 it's going in a direction most people don't seem to want them to go in. Also, polish was pretty bad at first, and still is in some places, including basic flat CGI renders being used as characters for guys like "X", and a ridiculous nonsense thrown together plot to appease the "SP gamers".
Killer Instinct was rebooted and came back with a bang. A lot of people have played the f2p digital version and the Retail editions that have been coming out. With over 10 million players it's clear that the sequel will get a lot of hype, especially if they make a proper sequel with a ton of content. Of the fighting games that will likely show up again next generations this is one of the surprises.
Tekken is still for right this minute, maybe only until the 23rd or so, the best selling fighting game franchise of all time. It is doing the best of the japanese old guard by a good margin outside of the wave that helped DBFZ hit 4 million shipped. Tekken 7 has been a pretty solid game with a good story mode, new characters coming out, and many refinements. Assuming you didn't play the original arcade release. A definite change in direction compared to Tekken 6 or Tekken Tag 2. If Namco managed to bring all this together at double the quality with Tekken 8 then Tekken popularity may return.
Mortal Kombat is the biggest winner here. With around ~11 million units it's managed to bring fighting games to sales that were never expected. Breaking the 10 million unit threshold for the first time is a major feat for real fighting games. Especially one with as controversial a presentation as Mortal Kombat. Yet we already saw hints of this success before. MK was already selling 3 million on average until he Reboot, which went all out in presentation and content, selling over 5 million by the time MKX came out (might be over 6 million now). Since then, MKX has sold almost ~11 million copies and the new title is already looking like a major seller. I expect maybe 2 million sales or more first week, possibly putting the MK franchise past Tekken within the first month, and becoming the best selling fighting game franchise of all time.
if there is a lesson here to take away it's that you can't crap on your fans, or isolate new comers for your core base (and try to milk them for money) forever. Eventually things don't end up working out. Tekken managed to learn that and has started driving on the correct side of the road. However, despite Capcoms revitalization of its other franchises, their fighting game division is still not getting it which really seems crazy to me.
I think the biggest dark horse is KOF. It's starting to actually put up higher than expected numbers outside of Japan while still keeping a decent Japanese audience. I can see a potential 1+ million selling KOF game if they play KOFXV correctly.
- Mortal Kombat X: ~11 million
- Killer Instinct: 10 million "Players" (Includes across f2p and Retail versions)
- InJustice 2: 5+ million
- Dragon Ball Fighter Z: 4+ Million
- Tekken 7: 3.6+ Million
- Street Fighter V: 2.9 million units
- Naruto Ninja Storm 4: 2 million
- Mvs.C Infinite: 1.3 million
- UFC 3: ~1 million
- Soul Calibur 6: OVER 1 Million (not sure how much more)
- KOFXIV: 550k+
- Blazblu Central Fiction: ????
- Dead or Alive 6: ?????????
No when you look at this list, it's obvious one of the core reasons why fighting game sales have been down is due to lack of releases (or too many releases for a couple franchises), but another big reasons is just a lack of content or really dismissing concerns or suggestions from the fanbase.
Dead or Alive 6 at this rate will be lucky to sell much at all.
Street Fighter V took quote some time to make it to that 2.9 a big drop from SFIv which sold 3.4 million in less time, then the Super expansion added almost another 2 million units, and the Ultra Expansion, which brought back SFII fatigue syndrome and imo they should not have put out, brought in over 1 million. SFV has been trying to save itself for awhile and just isn't getting the attention. It launched bare bones with bad online, and several other issues tat pissed off fans and disinterested new comers. Sure, it's a better game now, but compared to where the game was at during launch that's not really much of an accomplishment. It also didn't even bother launching with a SP story mode.
King of Fighters went into 3D and did pretty well for the franchise. I suspect that if they continue improving their 3D formula they will have their first million selling KOF game soon enough.
Soul Calibur 6 has some pretty mild anticipation and it's launch sales weren't really good, it picked up a little but and then pretty much dropped off the planet. Another game that launched bare bones, and had several money snatching policies implemented, including microtranactions, to try and make up for sales. Well, that backfired.
UFC is UFC. If EA wanted to make a dramatic improvement with actual effort put in I'm sure this could have been as big a franchise as Fight Night was but EA is fine with modest adjustments for $60.
Injustice 2 tried to one up the predecessor with more content, better animations and cutscenes, more polish, and again more content. Also refined mechanics, a great story, and again, more content.
Naruto Ninja Storm 4 breaks the decline cycle due to this being the LAST Naruto Series game from Bandai. Likely due to the actual Naruto series being replaced by a new one that takes place in the future. No point in selling original Naruto series games when you want to sell merchandise for the new one. But as a result you end up with the developers listening to fans, taking feedback seriously, and creating the best and most content rich Naruto Storm game yet. Too bad they only did this with the last game but at least it ends with a bang.
Dragon Ball Fighter Z arguably did ride off the wind brought in by Xenoverse, also aided by the Brand Name, but the game was still solid enough to take that ride to a whole new level with over 4 million shipped. Likely Arcs best selling game of all time and it will likely remain that way for the companies life time to be honest.
Mvs.C Infinite suffered and suffers from a lot of the same problems that plaqued SFV and SC6. When you compare the Mvs.C series now to pre-MVC3 it's going in a direction most people don't seem to want them to go in. Also, polish was pretty bad at first, and still is in some places, including basic flat CGI renders being used as characters for guys like "X", and a ridiculous nonsense thrown together plot to appease the "SP gamers".
Killer Instinct was rebooted and came back with a bang. A lot of people have played the f2p digital version and the Retail editions that have been coming out. With over 10 million players it's clear that the sequel will get a lot of hype, especially if they make a proper sequel with a ton of content. Of the fighting games that will likely show up again next generations this is one of the surprises.
Tekken is still for right this minute, maybe only until the 23rd or so, the best selling fighting game franchise of all time. It is doing the best of the japanese old guard by a good margin outside of the wave that helped DBFZ hit 4 million shipped. Tekken 7 has been a pretty solid game with a good story mode, new characters coming out, and many refinements. Assuming you didn't play the original arcade release. A definite change in direction compared to Tekken 6 or Tekken Tag 2. If Namco managed to bring all this together at double the quality with Tekken 8 then Tekken popularity may return.
Mortal Kombat is the biggest winner here. With around ~11 million units it's managed to bring fighting games to sales that were never expected. Breaking the 10 million unit threshold for the first time is a major feat for real fighting games. Especially one with as controversial a presentation as Mortal Kombat. Yet we already saw hints of this success before. MK was already selling 3 million on average until he Reboot, which went all out in presentation and content, selling over 5 million by the time MKX came out (might be over 6 million now). Since then, MKX has sold almost ~11 million copies and the new title is already looking like a major seller. I expect maybe 2 million sales or more first week, possibly putting the MK franchise past Tekken within the first month, and becoming the best selling fighting game franchise of all time.
if there is a lesson here to take away it's that you can't crap on your fans, or isolate new comers for your core base (and try to milk them for money) forever. Eventually things don't end up working out. Tekken managed to learn that and has started driving on the correct side of the road. However, despite Capcoms revitalization of its other franchises, their fighting game division is still not getting it which really seems crazy to me.
I think the biggest dark horse is KOF. It's starting to actually put up higher than expected numbers outside of Japan while still keeping a decent Japanese audience. I can see a potential 1+ million selling KOF game if they play KOFXV correctly.
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