The Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics was announced during yesterday’s Nintendo Direct presentation. Needless to say, we saw how absolutely flabbergasted the community was with their reactions to this announcement, which seemingly came out of nowhere.
Ultimately, the announcement of Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics isn’t just good for fans of Marvel vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and the other fighting games featured in the collection. It’s also good news for fans that are still holding out hope that we could see MvC4 or some sort of modern follow up to Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.
Looking back, it’s crazy to think that it’s been nearly seven years since Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was released back on September 19, 2017. Love the game or hate it, MvCI, objectively speaking, turned out to be a real flop commercially.
Initially, Capcom expected for MvCI to ship two million units (seemingly by its first year). However, Capcom would declare the game as having soft sales by the end of 2017, citing that it had only sold about one million units by then.
Ultimately, MvCI has sold around 2.2 million units throughout its lifetime, though this is likely counting plenty of units that have been sold after a few price drops for the game.
We’ve never heard any official confirmation of this, but rumors have suggested that MvCI’s failure had created a strained relationship between Capcom and Disney. The fact that these two companies were no longer collaborating to release MvC themed products over the years certainly supports these rumors.
It certainly didn’t help to learn that Ryota Niitsuma, Producer for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, no longer works at Capcom. Indeed, the future of the series was looking rather bleak.
This is why the announcement of this collection was such a surprise for the community. It has also renewed hopes that we could actually see a true sequel to UMvC3.
A lot has changed for both Capcom and Disney since their collaboration on MvCI. Disney has since reacquired the X-Men’s film and television rights from Fox, which is why X-Men characters, despite being a prominent part of MvC’s history, were excluded from the latest game. As one might expect, this had a major impact on the game’s perception upon release.
Additionally, Capcom has become significantly more financially secure since relying on companies like Sony and Disney to front the bills for games like Street Fighter 5 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite respectively. It also feels like Capcom has truly learned its lesson with how they’re designing fighting games these days, despite having previously said so before the release of MvCI.
This collaborative collection demonstrates that the two companies are willing to work together once more. This could also mean that they have another collaborative project in the works, or they’re planning to gauge the success of the collection to see where to go from here.
Based on previous statements from Capcom reps, Capcom was gauging interest in the Darkstalkers series when they released Darkstalkers Resurrection. Unfortunately for fans, Darkstalkers Resurrection didn’t perform as well as Capcom had hoped, resulting in a hiatus for the series that’s still ongoing today.
Luckily though, the Marvel vs. Capcom series is more likely to hit any projections that Capcom and/or Disney might have for Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics due to the community and culture behind the series. We’ll just have to see how things play out from here after the collection is released for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Steam sometime here in 2024.