Arc System Works are perhaps the most active fighting game developer on the market and while their biggest published games haven’t reached the heights of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat or Tekken sales, they are probably the most contracted developer by other publishers as well as one of the fastest growing Japanese developers due to their heightened success in recent years.
With two Arc System Works-developed games (more if you count their published games like Under Night In-Birth 2 [Sys:celes]) on the market that are currently being supported with post-launch content, Guilty Gear Strive and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, you might be surprised to hear that they actually have several other projects in the pipeline as well. But what could they be?
The reason we know that Arc System Works are in fact working on several different projects as of right now actually comes from a video that’s 9 months old as of writing. Back in the video, which detailed the development of Season 3 for Guilty Gear Strive, this factoid was mentioned in passing by the game’s director Akira Katano.
“Arc System Works has, even only over the last few years, welcomed many new staff members and has continued to grow. As it grows we continue to work on a variety of projects, some of which we have yet to announce.” — Akira Katano
At the time, Katano mentioned that there’d been an expansion to the work force at Arc System Works in recent years. “Arc System Works has, even only over the last few years, welcomed many new staff members and has continued to grow,” he said, continuing with “as it grows we continue to work on a variety of projects, some of which we have yet to announce.”
This seems like good news all around for anyone who’s a fan of Arc System Works games, though the Guilty Gear Strive director did also have a less joyous tidbit to share at the end.
“Unfortunately, as we’re jumping from project to project, even our growing number of staff is not enough to handle the amount of work,” he concluded, which likely is part of why we ended up seeing Venom’s release delayed for Guilty Gear Strive earlier this year.
So we know that Arc System Works have projects in the making… but what are they? I’m going to outline a few possibilities below from what I believe to be the least likely down to the most likely.
This one seems like the obvious choice for Arc System Works to be working on at some point… but not yet.
Guilty Gear Strive may have divided the old fanbase, but there’s no denying that its sales speak for themselves with Arc System Works announcing last summer that the game had hit 3 million copies sold.
Bringing the franchise to new heights obviously means that there will be more from it to come in the future, especially with an anime series based on the property set to start next month, but it’s unlikely that a sequel is in development as of right now.
The thing is, Guilty Gear Strive released in 2021 and even though its current post-launch content has seen some trouble, it’s still got at least the end of its third season to wrap up.
Even after that, there’s no telling if that’s actually the end — Guilty Gear Strive may have even further post-launch content planned. We’ve seen some fighting games go as far as five seasons of post-launch support, so who’s to say?
Guilty Gear will definitely be getting a new game somewhere down the road, but it’s just much too early for something like that at the current stage.
Guilty Gear Xrd, the predecessor to Strive, released its first version in 2014 and was eventually followed up by Strive in 2021. So… maybe in 2028?
Last week, I touched on the puzzling absence of a Dragon Ball FighterZ sequel in an article here on EventHubs and while it seems like such a no-brainer to do given the success of the first game… there’s really no indication as of right now that it’s happening.
Dragon Ball FighterZ is a game that Arc System Works don’t explicitly have control over since they aren’t the publishers but were hired by Bandai Namco to work on the game under their publishing label, so any decisions to be made on a sequel would be conducted by the publishing company.
Because of this, it’s not really up to Arc System Works if it’s going to happen or not. They mostly have the opportunity to either say yes or no if Bandai Namco wishes to work with them again… and that’s assuming a sequel is even on the table to begin with.
There’s definitely merit to the idea, given how well Dragon Ball FighterZ did, but it’s also important from Bandai Namco’s perspective to not overflood the market with similar games.
While the recently released Dragon Ball Sparking Zero is not a traditional fighting game, it’d be disingenuous to say that they aren’t hitting a similar spot in the market by being one-on-one competitive fighting games, albeit in extremely different styles and with different levels of competitive integrity to them.
At the end of the day, there’s just no evidence for a sequel now despite a few promising leads from years ago which I outlined in my previous article.
Said leads could just as well be related to the upcoming Hunter X Hunter Nen Impact, so right now there’s not much pointing to a Dragon Ball FighterZ 2 no matter how much sense it would make.
The BlazBlue series was one of Arc System Works’ staples alongside Guilty Gear since its debut in 2008, but on the fighting game front it’s stayed stagnant for quite some time now.
Although
That’s specifically talking about the fighting games though — the series has actually seen recent success with its mobile spinoff game BlazBlue: Entropy Effect recently being announced to have crossed 1 million sales meaning that the intellectual property itself is definitely still alive and well in fans’ minds.
If Arc System Works are indeed working on something for the BlazBlue series, it might end up a tad different than what fans expect, though. This is because series creator Toshimichi Mori left the company back in 2022, so it would most likely be the first core game in the series developed without his presence… if it’s even on the table at all.
This is one that fans have been clamoring for almost a full decade at this point. The original Persona 4 Arena released in 2012 with an update called Persona 4 Arena Ultimax following in 2013 for arcades but 2014 for home consoles.
Persona 4 Arena was made during the Persona franchise’s staggering growth in the public consciousness, but long before it had reached its actual heights.
Persona 5 was released in 2016 and hit new heights for the franchise, bringing Persona into the public eye in a way it really hadn’t been before and ever since then fighting game fans have been asking… when’s Persona 5 Arena?
Well, back in 2016, the Persona 4 Arena series director said they definitely want to make it happen, though this was right after the release of Persona 5 itself so it was a bit too early to say anything.
In 2021, more news surfaced where some URLs that could potentially be linked to Arena games related to Persona 5 were unearthed, leading fans to believe that perhaps the time had finally come.
Unofficial leaks occurred in 2023 which stated outright that Persona 5 Arena is happening, though there’s been no official word since then.
Much like Dragon Ball FighterZ, this is a scenario where Arc System Works would be doing contract work for a different publisher, in this case Sega.
Given that Arc System Works have expanded their workforce and are traditionally known to do many such contract games (besides Dragon Ball FighterZ, they’ve also developed Granblue Fantasy Versus and its sequel as well as DNF Duel for other publishers in recent years), they should definitely be available to bring the series back if Sega asked them to.
With Persona bigger than ever and Sega finally making their own jump back into fighting games with Virtua Fighter, it feels like a no-brainer for this to materialize.
Even though we’ve heard rumblings about it for almost a full decade now, there has yet to be anything concrete about it. But with so much smoke surrounding this potential project, there really has to be fire somewhere, right?
This is such a broad scope so it’s barely even a prediction, but it’s also the most obvious one to be happening.
Let’s face it — when it comes to fighting games, Arc System Works are the talk of the town and they have been for a very long time. If a publisher wants a fighting game spinoff to any of their franchises, this is where they go.
From 2005’s Fist of the North Star game all the way up to 2022’s DNF Duel, the sheer volume of licensed games that Arc System Works have taken upon themselves throughout the years is just beyond any comparison with other fighting game developers.
Although their rates may be a bit more expensive after how well Dragon Ball FighterZ (10 million copies sold as of May 2023) did, you can bet that there are lots of intellectual property owners out there who want their own slice of that pie.
Obviously, there’s absolutely no telling what kind of franchises Arc System Works might be collaborating with. After Granblue Fantasy Versus and DNF Duel, basically anything is on the table from mobile games to foreign franchises to Japan, so anything could happen.
The most common request seems to be for the storied fighting game developer to try their hand at other popular manga series than Dragon Ball and give them the FighterZ treatment — I personally had some suggestions on that topic a few weeks ago.
Whatever they’re working on, I’m sure we’ll find out in the near future what at least one of those projects are because it’s been a while now since we saw anything brand new from Arc System Works.
With the Arc World Tour Finals set to be held this weekend, maybe we’ll even get some kind of sneak peek in the next few days… ?
Source: Event Hubs
