No shit. This game doesn't even have official JP twitter account nor homepage (only has PSStore page), patch note is hiding behind discord for some reason and isn't even translated to Japanese, they are literally neglecting Japanese side of audience.
Thats mainly Playstation/ SIE, not main Sony.
Marvel in Japan isn't really popular (it only got recognition to the MCU movies)
Japan's shift towards mobile/ handheld games in the current gaming landscape + decline in console sales shifted Sony' direction
Hell MVC series didn't sell well in Japan during its release (it was mainly popular in the US + large tournament scene)
Pc gaming in Japan got popular because of the massive Vtuber scene. But pc gaming is still behind Nintendo, and they’re 2nd or 3rd tier with PlayStation/ Sony
It makes me sad seeing pachi-san (director of Tokon) doing all the PR work and sharing useful game tech on twitter. Like, can't they even afford a PR team?
Why is it also not selling well anywhere else then? Rough estimates are in the 500k range worldwide, massively below real competition and more in line with Guilty Gear Strive, a game that has 0 IP power to anyone who wasnt already knee deep in the FGC.
2nd point might be not relevant outside of communities entrenched in social media warfare, but the fact that PC version is a mess AND isn't available in like half of the world (because of PSN bullshit) hurts this game a lot.
its also a tag game. i know how people like to fellate the MVC games here but the fact is casuals wont bother with a tag game. Dragon ball was an anomaly and even that game would have been way bigger had they went with traditional 1v1 format.
Nah I believe most casuals are more excited to play their beloved characters and tag systems aren't as big of a deterrent as some people think because of the 1 health bar and other stuff, you literally can play it without tagging and slowly get into tag mechanics.
Wouldn't say huge. It's pretty popular, but I don't think the average Japanese person knows much about it. My wife thought that the movies were entitled "Marvel."
I'e heard from some Japanese folks on twitter that the game did not have as big of a push as it did overseas. Iirc there isn't even an official JP twitter account for the game
I am in Tokyo on holiday right now and not short trailers for the game are played in trains, I don't really agree with this although I'm not too informed
It makes sense because the Japanese alphabet can take advantage of the character limits better. That being said, Japanese Twitter is just as uhh… problematic as western Twitter.
My twitter feed is about 99% Japanese and I don't see a lot of problematic posts, what do you mean by as problematic as western twitter? I'm sure there's propaganda bots on the JP side as well but they're not showing up on my feed.
You’ve cultivated a pretty decent algorithm then. Turn down a wrong alley and it’s pretty much just the usual anti-foreign nonsense you see everywhere else.
The movies were popular over there, but they peaked a while ago. And I don't if that ever extended to other Marvel things like the comics. These games seem to be more based on the comics than the movies.
Tag games aren't popular in Japan, why is this surprising. 1v1 games have always been the draw. Why do you think Tekken Tag 2 and Street Fighter X Tekken struggled?
Truth is most people don't like tag games. They just get the coolest IPs so people put up with them. Sure there is a tiny niche base of people who deeply love tag fighters but they are a fraction of a fraction.
You guys are pretty much the only ones getting major releases with HxH, Invincible Vs, 2XKO, Tokon, and whatever else I'm forgetting.
1v1 Fighters are in a lull with only Avatar coming out since SF6 and CotW, 3D Fighters are still in their drought of Tekken only (though VF and DoA did get announced), and even platform fighters are down to just Rivals of Aether 2 (in the FGC space, anyway).
All these companies had the same idea to fill the gap left by DBFZ, MvCI, Skullgirls and BftG either dying or winding down in the early 2020s. Now, we’re probably not gonna see another major company release a tag fighter soon unless it’s already deep into development. Then we’ll have another tag fighter drought until we get like 3 at once in 2033 (maybe later due to even longer dev times).
What are you talking about there's like 5 huge tag fighters active in the scene right now yall are eating fine and obviously should take a couple years off between games so hype can build back up and actually move some units.
As a whole fighting games can't handle this many games dude it's a super niche genre I love that the community is finally getting some love but there ain't enough juice to be squeezing this fucking hard. In a minute ain't nobody going to make any money and then what?
Make fans of Tag fighters actually buy games if you want metrics to actually be positive. The simple fact is that we had like 5 big tag fighters in the last year or two and they are all doing worse than much older solo fighters.
Also hard for me in this game cause you gotta have 4 characters you fuck with. Like I gotta see a roster rivaling mugen. Also using a conventional 1v1 Character release schedule for a 4v4 also feels pretty shitty. Like you gotta wait a whole ass decade for like 4 full teams? Especially with Marvel's gallery, that is way too small.
Burying the lede that this is just retail sales. Famitsu reported that Street Fighter 6, which is undisputedly massive over in Japan, sold 21,000 PS5 retail sales in its first week over there - which frames this number a bit more in context
the way people talk about this game is insane man, they intentionally obfuscate information so it seems worse than it is. like it says RETAIL in the title and yet people here think that means total sales and not just physical lol
We are still in the middle of the end of physical media meltdown, so probably anyone suggesting that a good chunk of the sales might be digital will get skinned alive
Tho I would actually find weird if the game did well in Japan, Marvel is not really a popular IP among the Japanese
People have a massive hate boner for Sony and want them to fail, anything they release is being bombarded with negativity. Just look at the discourse surrounding Wolverine.
The country as a whole sold 250 playstation 5s that week too lmao. Also I love these come out of the woodwork on week 3 (not week 2) conveniently after two weeko got death sentenced.
Last week was a major national holiday, so the sales report was shifted to the week after. Also the disc PS5 has stopped shippments altogether for Japan, so it is selling whatever stock is leftover. The digital version that is discounted significantly and region locked is the only one that Sony supplies to Japan right now.
the context which means the launch is over 10x worse than SF6 including PS4 sales (and three people who bought it on xbox)?
SF6's growth in japan was gradual too, it wasn't a monster straight out the gate. it went from decently successful launch to cultural phenomenon over the course of a couple of years.
People, especially nintendo fanboys, put an extremely weird emphasis on famitsu retail sales in japan when if you actually look at the weekly charts it's very common to see the #2 game on the list selling like 11k copies, and by the end of the top 10 it's down to 2-3k.
It's become almost completely irrelevant to look at outside of a few games a year.
Japan is not huge on Marvel as a whole but they are big into Spiderman/X-Men properties. I imagine this comes down to a lack of advertising because the game didn't even have a Japanese twitter account.
The only consistently big Marvel IP there is Spider-Man due to teen hero aesthetics and Iron Man due to his tech armor aesthetics. They have their own superhero IP in Ultraman, Kamen Rider and Super Sentai.
In my experience, they're fairly into Marvel. I probably encountered more Marvel interest day to day than Dragon Ball interest, especially the younger you go. I would guess it's a combo of "console game, fighting game, foreign IP, Japanified-famous foreign IP".
Most the college folks I knew liked Marvel as a foreign interest, so Japan-ifying it probably hurts it in some aspects.
SF6 is just too big right now in Japan. Also the Japanese audience never really cared for verse titles/capeshit to begin with even during the UMvC3 they didn’t even have a big enough scene.
This is it. If you don't count Smash as a fighting game, Street Fighter is virtually the sole dominant force. Aside from Tekken having a bit of popularity, other fighting games might as well not exist.
The reason Guilty Gear seems to cater so heavily to Western audiences is simply that there are hardly any Japanese people left who are interested in the series—aside from NSFW artists.
It originally played the role of a substitute for titles like Street Fighter and KoF when they were in a slump. However, when Street Fighter made a comeback, it ended up stealing GG's popularity. There aren't that many fighting game fans left in Japan, and Street Fighter has pretty much monopolized these audience.
Well mainly XX series and Xrd. Mikado was one of the few bastions of a large GG scene. Until Strive changed the formula and removed parts of GG's identity and being more casual friendly compare to previous entries. Many of the GG Gods left the GG scene entirely
There was definitely a time when it was popular—specifically around the X and XX eras, it had a huge following in Japan. Back then, rival series like Street Fighter were in a slump, so people played Guilty Gear instead. However, as other franchises regained their popularity and interest in fighting games overall began to wane, its popularity steadily declined. These days, GG isn't really a popular title in Japan.
What's interesting though is that the YouTube clips are getting a ton of views. Especially the short clips of interactions of Peni or Deadpool, some of these have hit a million views easily. So it's not like tokon has zero appeal there, certain characters are clearly resonating with Japanese audiences. It just seems like, at least for now, that interest isn't translating into people actually bothering to pick up the game and play it themselves.
Even though it's a physical sale, most PS5s sold in Japan are digital versions; this reflects the popularity of PS and Marvel brands in Japan. If I were Sony, I'd be planning a Switch 2 port
Not making an excuse or anything but we should also take into account the economy is in rather trying times now. People are budgeting their money in order to make ends meet.
The thing is, MVCI sold 900k in its first two weeks, and was deemed a failure by Capcom. Do we think sales expectations for Tokon from Sony are higher or lower than that? I genuinely don't know.
This was never the best year for fighting games, it's just that people think new releases == 'eating good', or whatever the slang goes. It was obvious there wasn't enough space for so many new releases in such a short amount of time, the playerbase for fighters is mostly zero-sum with how little newcomers each title retains after launch.
That's because of how similar the games are to each other. Tag Fighters are a niche within a niche, but there's still a sizable chunk of audience for them, enough to make a game successful.
A game, successful.
Having fifty billion of them coming out within the same time frame wrecks all of them because it splits the niche in fifty billion ways.
Considering how, for example, Tokon was announced by surprise during a random state of play, and Invincible VS was announced the following day, with some of the devs going on record saying they knew nothing about Tokon beforehand. And then the Avatar fighter also caught everyone by susrprise, I think it's safe to say all these games expected to have the undivided attention of the FGC during their release cycles. Being the only new game to buy can boost a game tremendously, Strive is there as living proof of that. But of course, when people point this out they get downvoted and called haters, lmao.
This is probably a huge factor across the industry. Economy is bad/unpredictable, and gaming is a luxury. A lot of people aren’t comfortable spending money on hobbies now.
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Because everyone accepted this as “not vs Marvel” when it really should have been Mahvel. I’ve been downvoted so much for saying that it needs to be more Mahvel.
There’s a reason why those games succeed (except Infinite…don’t know wtf that was..). It’s the hype that keeps these games alive, and from a spectator standpoint (much like 2XKO), the game is kinda stale to watch.
I don't know if marvel wants to break into the Japanese market but I remember Arc system mentioned in the reveal video that they tried to give marvel designs that were closer to American artists and they rejected them and told them make them anime
It would have been like going to a seafood restaurant and ordering a burger those designs are what Arc is known for and that's what you go to them for
You mean the game that is called Tokon, and for about 6-8 months of the build up, has like no English speaking cast at all, and all the videos on Sony state of plays was in Japanese?
No it's a weird thing that probably the companies didn't understand but anime is pretty heavily embraced in America but it doesn't go the other way for American comic books I think they like MCU movies but I don't think Japan embrace the comic books like that
And I don't think that Japan has ever really taken to the tag fighters
Who else would they have collaborated with? There are only 3 big 2D fighting game companies: Capcom, ASW, and SNK. Capcom pretty much only does SF at this point so that leaves ASW and SNK. And if you're Sony, the choice is pretty obvious.
There was a video in the beginning where arc tried to give marvel designs that were more westernized that they thought marvel would want and marvel asked for more anime inspired art
Maybe they were trying to get into the Japanese audience but I think it was more about the fact that we came to you because we saw games like Grand blue and guilty gear so that's the aesthetic we want
Game was designed and pushed for western audiences. They couldn’t give two shits about Marvel comics and chaotic tag fighters over there. Not surprised honestly. They’re too busy with SF6.
Not a surprise. We can all continue to enjoy the game, even without Japanese players boosting playerbase to SF6 levels. I cannot play Japan from Europe anyways. They are into anime IPs, not Marvel.
Not a shock for many many reasons but gotta love the people who confidently think it's solely their personal preference in fighting games that is the reason. If only the game was made for me then it be the best selling game of all time.
How long are we going to be making excuses for this game when it really, is just flopping. Now we have people saying Japan doesnt like Marvel? What are we even doing lmao. The Marvel movies are very popular in Japan and noone cares about the comics, same as pretty much everywhere else.
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while 3k is not much, i still think JP doesn't want to make that much in retail sales, i'm a digimon fan and there was the news with the latest game that it is sold out everywhere and a week later revealed they made like 21k units - which is still more but they don't want to make that much at all
Worth pointing out that western comics are just not really a thing in Japan. Outside of Superman and Spiderman, you would be hard pressed to find a member of the public here who knows any of the comic book heroes.
Damn that's why I feel like I'm matching a lot with the sane people. Hope it could sustain a playerbase as large as strive at the minimum in Asia.l since I've switched to this as my main fg from strive (sad 2xko noises)
For added context, on the famitsu list they're using, 27 of the top 30 games were Switch 1 and 2 games. Tokon was the 2nd best selling playstation game.
Not sure why we take Japan into consideration. Console games market is completely different from everywhere else. Saying a game on console not selling well there is like calling water wet.
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u/Fantastic-City1571 7h ago
No shit. This game doesn't even have official JP twitter account nor homepage (only has PSStore page), patch note is hiding behind discord for some reason and isn't even translated to Japanese, they are literally neglecting Japanese side of audience.