Developers representing every major Japanese fighting game joined the Japan Fighting Game Publisher Roundtable live stream that was announced last week. The live stream was mainly meant for announcements that were originally intended for the EVO World Championships that was cancelled. The stream consisted of an initial hour of discussion followed up an hour of announcements.
The first hour of the discussion consisted of questions for the attendants. Topics included the selection of game rosters, the phasing out of arcade controls, the future of user experiences, and the conflict of simplification versus accessibility in modern fighting game mechanics. The most poignant takeaways were the common opinion of universal crossplay among consoles but the difficulty is collaborating between each console’s publishers, and the idea for the creation of adaptive CPU AIs for better single-player experiences and an alternative for competitive practice for players without access to netplay or local play. Interestingly, there was very little discussion on the subject of improving netcode — an issue that resonates strongly among fighting game players due to the cancellations of public gatherings and events because of the current worldwide Coronavirus lockdown. Despite this, some of the announcements included aspects of netplay improvements in some way, particularly the Fighting EX Layer announcement that they are planning on adding rollback to their netcode.
The second hour consisted of the announcements that most people tuned in for. First to go was Koei Tecmo, who announced Dead or Alive 6 and its DLC will all be on sale. A free to play version of the game will also be available to download, giving players who want to try out the game a fully functioning training mode and netplay, they only need to pay for the characters they want to play. No other plans were announced, which is unfortunate as it seems Dead or Alive 6’s competitive lifespan is slowly reaching its end. Putting the game on sale is simply Koei Tecmo cutting their losses with the game’s lacklustre reception.
Next up, SNK reaffirmed the next DLC character for Samurai Shodown. Gongsun Li, a guest character from Tencent’s Honor of Kings will be a free DLC. She had her trailer dropped a day before the live stream. A confirmation of season 3 for Samurai Shodown was also announced and production is underway. No information of last year’s big SNK announcement, The King of Fighters XV, was shown but it was mentioned that it was still in development and news about it will be shown at a future undetermined date.
Capcom’s reveals for Street Fighter V’s final season will instead be shown on their own stream on August 5th. Instead, their announcements were mainly focused on tournaments. Capcom will be sponsoring online versions of the Capcom Pro Tour and the Street Fighter League, though that news is more geared towards Japanese pro players. For everyone else, a demo version of Street Fighter V will be available for the next two weeks, giving new players a chance to try out the game and every character available before they buy. The panel joked about the demo being for people who have no idea about Street Fighter, before stating that the chances of someone not knowing about Street Fighter is extremely unlikely.
As mentioned before, Arika announced netplay improvements for Fighting EX layer, including netcode improvements. A patch that included rollback netcode was released right after the stream ended. A system for changing skins was also mentioned, although the game has no alternate skins at the moment. It sounds like Arika plans to continue supporting and updating the game, even after all of its content has been released.
Bandai Namco had the bulk of the announcements, as stated a few days before the live stream. The first reveal was the return of Setsuka to Soulcalibur VI. The quick-draw swordswoman’s last appearance was in Soulcalibur IV — a full 12 years since her last appearance in the series. Alongside Setsuka’s release will be a new balance patch with adjustments for the entire cast, a new stage, and new parts for character customization, including costume parts from Tekken characters.
As many fans speculated, it was confirmed via a trailer that Tekken 7’s fourth season is in development. In addition to new moves and balance changes to each character, the newest season will feature improvements to online play, such as a new scoring system for matchmaking and an indicator to show which players are on Wi-Fi. Further announcements are to be announced at a later date, but the trailer ends on a tease of a shadowy, ninja-like figure standing on the top of a pagoda overlooking a modern city. Most people assume this character is Kunimitsu, who will likely be the first DLC character for season 4. Kunimitsu’s last appearance was in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 in 2012 and is one of the few remaining legacy characters with a unique move set that has yet to be added to Tekken 7.
There were no Dragon Ball FighterZ reveals during the stream, but it was announced that an event simply called the “Dragon Ball FighterZ Show” will happen later in August. Announcements for the game will be revealed at that time.
Lastly, Arc System Works revealed not one, but two different character reveal trailers for Guilty Gear Strive. The first trailer was for Leo Whitefang, a returning character from Guilty Gear Xrd. Despite not being as iconic as some other potential returnees, Leo’s straightforward move set and no-nonsense playstyle seem to fit Strive’s philosophy of less involved gameplay as most of his tools are represented in his trailer. The next reveal was shown immediately after and it revealed Nagoriyuki, the mysterious unknown samurai that was shown in the very first reveal trailer at EVO 2019. Nagoriyuki seems to be a heavy-hitting character with an extremely long range and a subsystem where he drains the blood from the opponent to power up his sword strikes. The official Guilty Gear Twitter refers to him as a “vampire samurai.” Specifics of his functions have yet to be explained. The next character reveal is scheduled for early October.
