Once again, heads of multiple major Japanese fighting game publishers gathered together to discuss developments within the industry and to make announcements for fans to look forward to later this year. Organized by Bandai Namco, the stream aired on February 21st. Topics included how lockdowns have affected the tournaments, logistics of online matchmaking, and the future of fighting game organization. Much like the previous roundtable stream from last year, fans tuning into the stream got one hour of discussion and another hour of announces for current fighting game titles.
Representing Arc System Works were Daisuke Ishiwatari (creator of the Guilty Gear Series), Mori Toshimichi (creator of Blazblue and Chief Development Officer at Arc System Works), and Akira Katano (battle director for Guilty Gear Strive). SNK’s representative was Yasuyuki Oda, producer of Samurai Shodown. From Capcom came Street Fighter V’s director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto. Bandai Namco representatives included Harada Katsuhiro (Tekken director and General Manager) and Naoya Yasuda (Esports Producer). Finally, Arika was represented by Akira Nishitani, director of Fighting EX Layer.
The State of Play
The discussion segment kicked off with the topic of online play. With the global Coronavirus lockdowns still in effect, it remains unfeasible for offline fighting game tournaments and events to be organized.
This need for a higher quality of online connections has resulted in the demand for the implementation of rollback netcode — a type of online matchmaking designed to re-sync player inputs with minimal lag. This type of netcode is popularly considered to be the standard to live up to for all upcoming fighting games as it is preferable to traditional delay-based netcode which tends to slow and “lag” the games down over bad connections. As fighting games require precise timing and reaction, slowing down the game experience is both unenjoyable, and inaccurate compared to offline versus play. Rollback was previously implemented in Fighting EX Layer and Tekken 7, and the recent Guilty Gear Strive open beta test was also made to test out rollback matchmaking. While SNK’s Oda did not mention whether there are plans to implement rollback into Samurai Shodown or the upcoming The King of Fighters XV, SNK has re-released older titles such as Garou: Mark of the Wolves, The Last Blade 2, and The King of Fighters 2002: Unlimited Match on Switch, PC, and Playstation 4 with added rollback netplay.
Namco’s Harada also brought in a graph showing the ratio of ethernet versus Wi-Fi connections for Tekken 7. Since the launch of Tekken 7’s Season 4 update, online play has featured a Wi-Fi indicator to show whether the challenging player is tethered or not — a feature that will also be in the retail version of Guilty Gear Strive. Interestingly, the amount of Tekken players on Wi-Fi has actually increased since the update, even though the ratio of tethered and untethered connections has skewed more towards the former. The panel comically concluded that the rise of Wi-Fi warriors is due to people simply assuming online improvements would allow for untethered play, before politely suggesting to viewers that connecting to netplay via ethernet cord is the optimal way to play.
Before moving onto announcements, the panel briefly discussed the possibility of the next roundtable being a tournament or exhibition. One of the more disappointing aspects for the developers was having to cancel events due to lockdowns and not being able to travel and meet players worldwide. Capcom in particular had to cancel their entire Pro Tour series and move to a strictly online format. The panelists suggested that for future gatherings and roundtables, a tournament similar to Tougeki or EVO would be possible as these events are one of the few times multiple companies can congregate in one session.
Fighting Game Announcements
Moving onto the announcements, Bandai Namco were the first to go. Their reveal was a simple teaser trailer for the last fighter for Tekken 7 — a fictional female prime minister hailing from Poland. Harada mentioned that a full trailer and more details about the new character will be revealed in March at a major Tekken event.
Arika announced a new version of Fighting EX Layer, titled Another Dash, along with a trailer. The highlight of the update is new universal mechanics for all characters, adding an extra strategic layer to the gameplay.
SNK had a plethora of announcements to make, the first of which was a trailer for the upcoming DLC character Cham Cham in Samurai Shodown. It was then announced that a Guilty Gear character will be joining the Samurai Shodown roster as one of the DLC characters. A trailer announcing the next The King of Fighters XV character was shown next, which was revealed to be Chizuru Kagura— the final member of the Sacred Treasures team and a character that had not been playable since The King of Fighters 2003.
Arc System Works showed off the trailer for I-No, the final member of Guilty Gear Strive’s roster, which now features 15 characters in total for the release version.
Lastly, Capcom, who had previously made their own announcements separate from the roundtable, simply recapped the announcements made from their winter update. This included footage of new Street Fighter V characters Dan and Rose, the new V-Shift mechanic, and a look at some new DLC costumes.
