The game is almost as far off from release now as it was from Soul Calibur 5
You know time really is flying by when you look down and realize Soul Calibur 6 somehow came out six years ago already, which is basically the same amount of time that fans had to wait from Soul Calibur 5 to 6.
To help celebrate the birthday / anniversary, SC6’s Director shared a special sketch he made for the occasion as well as a message for the dedicated fans.
Yoshinori “Masuteru” Takahashi revealed a lovely portrait he made featuring Xianghua along with the text SC6 and 6th.
“Our souls are still burning, right?” he wrote as a nod to the series and community.
While it is nice to see Soul Calibur get some more recognition, it is also an unfortunate reminder that the future of Siegfried, Mitsurugi, Taki, Talim, Nightmare and the rest looks fairly grim at the moment.
Even before SC6 released, Producer Motohiro Okubo was rather up front with players by saying it could be “the last” game if the performance wasn’t strong enough after all the convincing it took to make Bandai Namco following Soul Calibur 5’s failure.
『ソウルキャリバー6』発売6周年記念！
Soulcalibur6 6th Anniversary!Our souls are still burning, right?
#SOULCALIBUR #ソウルキャリバー#キャリバー6くんおたおめ pic.twitter.com/kkc8FEsQ8g— マステル高橋 / Yoshinori Takahashi (Masuteru) (@masuooyama) October 18, 2024
Things were looking good initially with SC6 receiving a “steady / favorable launch” in early 2019, and Bamco would give the game a second season of DLC that wasn’t initially planned, which concluded in 2020.
As of 2021, however, Soul Calibur 6 had reached over 2 million sales in almost five years.
That still put it ahead of SC5 (1.56 million in one year), SC3 and the original games, but still below SC2 and SC4 (2.3 million in 8 months) — and that’s the last we heard about it directly.
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So while SC6 hit pretty decently for the series, it still paled compared to Bamco’s other flagship 3D fighting game considering Tekken 7 eclipsed 11 million sales and Tekken 8 crossed 2 million in a month.
Okubo himself, who was the most vocal proponent of SC6 at Bamco, also left the company in 2021 though he still responded to Masuteru’s post in kind.
Still burning Masuteru sama
— Motohiro Okubo (@achilles_Okubo) October 18, 2024
Now with game development costs continuing to rise and Bandai Namco themselves facing cancelations and staff reductions, a new Soul Calibur doesn’t look to be in the cards any time soon.
Longtime Tekken Director Katsuhiro Harada wrote an extended letter earlier this year discussing the Tekken Project and Project Soul teams plus how they ended up in this situation.
He believes Soul Calibur largely lacks a driving force and vision to push the series to keep going because the veteran Project Soul members who would have taken on the leadership roles either moved up the corporate ladder or to a different studio entirely.
“I think that the fact that the number of members who had the drive to keep the title alive, even if they had to jump through all kinds of pressure, decreased as the organization changed, and that is one of the aspects that weakened Project Soul little by little,” said Harada. “I am not saying that is all But it was a big factor. Happened due to organizational policy, not individual problems.”
Harada also just recently spoke about how he’s “sad” Tekken is the only big 3D fighting game remaining, but he hasn’t given up hope on Soul Calibur returning at some point — and also recently shared his own of Persona 5’s Futaba.
“But from my point of view, I don’t think the fire of Project Soul has been extinguished,” Harada concluded in his letter. “There are still a few people in the company who have the will to do it. I would like to believe that they are just not united now.”
We’re not even sure if Project Soul still really exists at this point either considering their official website now just redirects to Bandai Namco’s Japanese page.
The fire might not be completely engulfed, but the point where the soul fully ignites once again with the flames of rebirth still seems way off in the distance.