In a rare showing of camaraderie in the industry, a bunch of Japanese fighting game publishers got together to hold a roundtable discussion about the past, present, and future of fighting games last night. Along with getting some insight into the development process, viewers were treated to a number of announcements that were originally planned for EVO 2020 (which was canceled).
It wasn’t the most exciting stream around, but you won’t need to worry about sitting through the Q&A portion. We’ve done the hard work and compiled all of the announcements into this post so you can get hyped without any of the downtime.
There’s a lot of cool stuff that was revealed, so let’s jump right into it.
SNK producers Yasuyuki Oda and Nobuyuki Kuroki revealed that a third season for Samurai Shodown will be happening in the near future. The team has been churning out DLC characters at a relatively fast rate now that it has adjusted to the work from home situation. The two then teased some news about King of Fighter XV but stated they weren’t able to create anything in time for this stream.
Not so much a new announcement, but Capcom announced that a new free trial for Street Fighter V will be happening in early August. Going for two weeks, it will allow players to try out the entire roster with no limitations. This will likely begin when Capcom announces the characters coming to the game’s fifth season on August 5, 2020.
Bandai Namco was up next with the announcement that Setsuka would be joining the cast of Soulcalibur VI. A returning veteran from the series’ third installment, she is sporting a new design that looks rather fancy. She’ll be available on August 4, 2020, for season pass holders and as an individual purchase.
Soulcalibur VI will also be receiving some Tekken themed costume parts for custom characters as well as a 2.20 patch that improves certain mechanics and online play. There wasn’t much information given to that bit, but it’s still nice to hear.
Right after, Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada revealed that Tekken 7 would be receiving a fourth season of DLC soon. The publisher didn’t have enough time to prepare a proper reveal, but a short teaser pointed to some kind of ninja being added. It’s possible this is Ryu Hayabusa from Dead or Alive, but we don’t really know.
What we can state as fact is that season four will be adding new moves for every character on the roster. Tekken 7 will also be getting revamped online, though not crossplay (Harada mentioned earlier this was down to console manufacturers not allowing it).
This doesn’t concern Tekken, but Bandai Namco revealed that Dragon Ball FighterZ will be getting proper reveals in August for its next few bits of DLC.
Rounding out the announcements, Arc System Works revealed that Guilty Gear -Strive- would be adding Leo Whitefang to the roster. Originally from the Xrd series, he doesn’t seem to be dramatically overhauled from his previous iterations.
Not to be outdone, the publisher finally unveiled the name of that black samurai it showed off during Strive’s reveal. His name is Nagoriyuki and he looks to have two different fighting styles that players can swap between. He looks like an excellent addition to the cast.
Last, but surely not least, Strive was confirmed to be coming to the PS5 when the game launches in 2021. That’s not definitive, but Arc System Works did tease that the next character reveal will be happening in October, so we’ll keep you up to date with that info.
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