After 17 years, there were some questions as to how much demand remains for a successor to Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3 among fans, but it seems the answer has already become pretty darn apparent.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is still only in its early access release phase, but it immediately achieved record-breaking player counts for Dragon Ball games, arena fighting games and fighting games in general.
Up to this point, Dragon Ball FighterZ held the record for most concurrent PC players for a game featuring Goku and friends, but that’s no more.
While DBFZ managed to hit a still wildly impressive player peak of 44,234 on Steam alone, the latest game has more than doubled it.
According to SteamCharts and SteamDB, Sparking Zero has already crossed over 91,000 concurrent players on PC with over 66,000 in the game right now as of the time of reporting.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot’s highest point was 25,000, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 was 13,000 and the first Dragon Ball Xenoverse reached almost 23,000.
And remember, this is still only the early access release window for players who pre-ordered the more expensive Deluxe or Ultimate Editions, so these numbers will probably reach even higher once it becomes available for everyone tomorrow, October 10.
That also beats out Street Fighter 6’s record for a paid fighting game release too that reached over 70,000 upon launch while Tekken 8 hit 46,000.
You may be thinking this could just be because anime arena fighters have more general appeal than traditional fighting games, but Sparking Zero is wildly outperforming its peers too.
Jump Force never quite cracked 10,000, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 only hit 8,300, Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash hit 5,200, and Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles at just under 8,000 for their peaks.
So Sparking Zero seems like it’s turning out to be something special for fighters in general, though it will be very interesting to see what sort of staying power this Dragon Ball game has after the launch window.
Considering FighterZ and the Xenoverse games have retained dedicated bases for years while modders have kept Budokai Tenkaichi 3 alive for over a decade, there’s a good chance Sparking may have a long tail of support for how big of a success this already looks to be for Bandai Namco.
The only fighter that still has DBSZ beat is MultiVersus with the beta having reached over 150,000 and the full launch hitting 114,000, but we have a feeling that may be broken come tomorrow too.
Currently, Sparking Zero is reviewing well as the second-highest rated Dragon Ball game of the past few generations, remaining only behind Dragon Ball FighterZ with the best scores overall.
And remember, these numbers only apply to the PC version of the game, so the console versions probably at least double or triple that count.
Sparking Zero is shaping up to be a multi-million seller upon release at this rate, and Bandai Namco will probably happily share those initial numbers soon to make it official.
But now how many other developers (or Bamco themselves) are going to be trying to chase this success moving forward? Those numbers are going to be hard to ignore.