Fighting Games Friday: DOA

It was only a few weeks ago when I somewhat asked in the title of a Fighting Games Friday post about whether Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive series was, well, Dead or Alive. It was hard to say at the time. The question was partly asked in jest, but also partly asked because I was curious about how much life remained in Dead or Alive 6 following the release of its newest character, Tamaki, and the announcement of a fix for its greedy hair color DLC.

I had no idea I’d get a definitive answer this quickly.

Team Ninja announced through the DoA Twitter account that any planned future content for DoA6 is, well, DOA. Its final update will arrive on April 16th, which will include the two last sets of outfits, bug fixes, and the option to purchase a Premium Ticket. It’s a somewhat surprising development thanks to how quickly support is being ended following the amount of content Dead or Alive 5 received following its release. DoA5 received two updated versions, Ultimate and Last Round, and was supported from its original release in September 2012 to December 2017 — over five years. Comparatively, DoA6 was supported from March 2019 to April 2020, just a hair over a year. This is, to make an obvious point, not a good performance.

Upon considering what’s happened with the game since it was announced, it’s actually not a surprising performance either. When it was first revealed, it appeared Team Ninja was toning down the fanservice in a bid to have the game taken more seriously to those who ignored it and the tournament scene because of the skeevy content. But any fans who were attracted by that were turned off by the infamous “core values” marketing incident that happened on the Evo Japan stream, and the fanservicey outfits were relegated to bonus threads. This created confusion as to who the intended audience was.

There were also problems with the game itself, including the broken new sidestepping feature that needed to be patched following its release after complaints, and the overall game wasn’t a big-enough leap over DoA5. That five out of the seven DLC characters were straight out of subsequent DoA5 releases with little modifications didn’t help, along with several outfit packs being reissues from DoA5 for high prices.

Team Ninja handled the game messily, and this clearly affected not only its initial sales, low for the debut of a game even at the end of a fiscal year, but also its DLC sales. In case anyone thinks this could lead to a Dead or Alive 6 Ultimate or a similarly-named upgrade, the Japanese statement reportedly implies that this is the definitive end for the game.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this marked at least a temporary end for the DoA fighters. (The Xtreme volleyball series will likely continue, hilariously enough.) It’s unlikely that Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo will be willing to fund another installment in the near future considering this title didn’t perform to expectations. The fighters could be relegated to the same place the Ninja Gaiden series currently occupies, which hasn’t received a new installment in six years — seven if you don’t want to count mediocre spinoff Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z.

If they do let DoA fighters rest, hey, maybe it will be time to give Ninja Gaiden another shot, assuming the team isn’t contracted for a different project. They have plenty of free development members considering Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, another Team Ninja-developed project, also just received its final update.

Granblue Fantasy: Versus’ next character will be Djeeta, shown off in a new trailer this week. She’s the female equivalent to male protagonist Gran, but merely leaving it at that is selling her short here. They have similar moves, but they’re not identical — despite my previous unfortunate implication to the contrary. It would be nice if she also represents the same dangerous combination of being easy to pick up and play and powerful in battle like Gran, however.

One particular move of hers won’t be easy to master. Djeeta’s Skybound Art will be the Power of the Ten, which will require a simple input to execute, but pressing the right buttons to continue the combo, and a command input to finish. The input is very similar to the Deadly Rave technique from Geese Howard and Rock Howard in SNK’s games, making this a nice reference. It would have been even better if they saved this for Feather, a Granblue Fantasy character, let’s say, inspired by Rock (so much that he would almost be considered an addition to the list of SNK guest characters if he was added.) But it’s possible he may not join this game, which would be tragic.

Djeeta will be available on April 7th, next Tuesday. The next trailer will be for Zooey on April 17th, two weeks from today.

It’s not the best time for fighting games with the lack of tournaments thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic slowly swirling around the world. But the news never stops, and players (rightfully, if they can) staying at home are playing them now more than ever. At least we have something to look forward to.