It’s almost that special and odd time of the year again where video game developers and fans come together to try and celebrate the best of the best while also showing off a bunch of new stuff.
Ahead of The Game Awards 2023 this week, we’re taking a closer look at what fighting game announcements are most likely going to be there.
This year falls in a bit of an interesting time for most fighting games that have either just gone through some reveals or may not have anything to show yet, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be anything there.
In recent years, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, The King of Fighters 15, Mortal Kombat and others have shown off new trailers for the award show and could be likely to return.
We do have to note, however, that the best chance we’ll have to see anything for fighting games not named Mortal Kombat 1 or Tekken 8 will probably come during the pre-show ahead of the main event — assuming they’re doing that again this year.
The Game Awards 2023 is taking place this Thursday, December 7 at 4:30 PT / 7:30 ET on basically all streaming platforms or right here with us.
Below, we go over our picks broken down in terms of how strong of a chance we believe they have at showing up though we definitely aren’t expecting to see them all.
Guilty Gear Strive is basically the only fighting game to now confirm they have an announcement to make during the award show at this point.
The next DLC character is said to launch sometime this month, and some of you may have seen things floating around online lately that may or may not be legit for what’s coming.
So we’ll see what the second entry for Season 3 has in store for Guilty Gear players very soon.
Are you ready for the next daredevil?
The next playable character joining Guilty Gear -Strive- will be unveiled at #TheGameAwards !
▼The Game Awards 2023 Official Streamhttps://t.co/QLNTlSoSWQ#GGST #GuiltyGearStrive pic.twitter.com/zdLCevaEhQ— GUILTY GEAR OFFICIAL (@GUILTYGEAR_PR) December 6, 2023
Tekken 8 is pretty much the only big remaining fighting game we have on the horizon at the moment, and the team has been pretty darn friendly with The Game Awards these past few years.
We may already know the launch roster with the reveal of Reina, but there’s still more to show.
They still haven’t shown off Story Mode this close to launch, so we think a big cinematic trailer could be the most likely of all with maybe some teases as to the first DLC characters.
Street Fighter 6 may be done with DLC characters for 2023, but we’ve still got a couple more on the horizon that haven’t been fully shown yet.
With the recent leak by Capcom of Ed’s portrait in the game, he may not be all that far off in the new year.
A trailer for him and maybe even a stinger for Akuma at the end could be in store for the crowd with SF6 being up for best fighting game of the year and showing everyone that they’re still here and mean big business going forward.
A few days ago this may have been at the top of the list with fighting game community members getting a letter from Sega telling them to tune in to The Game Awards, which sparked hope for a brand new Virtua Fighter for the first time in almost two decades.
Other evidence since, however, could well be pointing towards something else completely from Sega.
We’re still holding out hope though because that’s all we’ve really got here, but if it is, they’ll put it in the main show.
SNK has used The Game Awards in the past to do some new character trailers, so it seems like a good place to do it again.
They haven’t announced a Season 3 for King of Fighters 15 yet, but we pretty much know it’s coming sooner rather than later.
TGA would offer the developer the most eyes possible on the reveal even if it’s relegated to the pre-show — though I wouldn’t have high hopes for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves yet.
Mortal Kombat would have been a shoe in for TGA this year except they literally just released the trailer for Quan Chi this past weekend.
Besides just showing the necromancer off again, we’re not really sure what else they could reveal besides maybe another sneak peek at Peacemaker.
Who knows what Ed Boon may have up his sleeve though.
In an ironic twist of fate, the winner of best fighting game for last year is no longer playable since Warner Bros. pulled down the open beta for MultiVersus this past Summer.
The developers did promise a big return in 2024, however, so The Game Awards could be the time to re-introduce the platform fighter as a full release.
We’re not putting too much stock in that yet though since things have seemed pretty quiet on that front for a while now.
After Tekken 8, there’s not much on a larger scale to look forward to besides maybe Project L, so the big show would be a great time to introduce something new to the mix.
We just have no real idea as to what that would be right now outside of some of the stuff mentioned above.
An unexpected surprise would be nice though.