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Kyuu on 30 June 2025
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Darc Requiem said:
Kyuu said:

Indeed. Dead or Alive was a solid series with sexualised characters. Didn't really help it stand a chance against Tekken.

The "I love my hot sexualized waifus" crowd would generally rather pirate games or jerk off to free hentai sites. In my opinion a small percentage of players bought this game "only" for the hot protagonist. Eve's appearence is just the icing on the cake for most people.

Let's not forget that NieR Automata's success was also largely attributed to 2B and her booty. The argument was that hack and slash games generally sold a fraction of what it did. But then Devil May Cry 5 came out and eventually outsold it even without a Switch version.

2B and Eve's memes may have drawn a lot of attention and helped marketing their games, but not a lot of people would have bought them if they weren't well made.

Tekken is the best selling 3D fighting game. "Didn't really help it stand a chance against Tekken" applies to every 3D fighting game not named Tekken. Dead or Alive is the 3rd best selling 3D fighting game series behind Soul Calibur and has outsold the Virtua Fighter series 2 to 1. Dead or Alive 6 decided to shift the marketing away from the "hey we have hot waifus" tactics of the prior games and that, along with questionable fighting engine changes, caused it to only sell 2 million+ copies.

Virtua Fighter is obviously bigger than DoA overall. Where are you getting the 2 to 1 from?

DoA sold 9.7 million copies as of 2025.

VF sold + downloaded (PS Plus) 18 million as of 2021

I'm not including DoA's f2p downloads because unlike VF, DoA5 and 6 were permanently available in f2p. 

DoA had more multiplatform releases (all VF except 5 were exclusive) and started as a Playstation game. Virtua Fighter was capped by very small install bases, and by the time it supported Playstation, it was too late as Tekken established itself as THEE 3D game. VF4 should have been multiplatform like DoA2, might have prevented DoA from being Xbox's go-to fighting game. VF never got a true new release since 2006. The last DoA came out in 2019.

Virtua Fighter was quite huge in Japan. DoA isn't that big anywhere. I'm curious where you're getting these figures from. 2 million+ seems in line with what the series typically sold, isn't it? I'd argue DoA5 and 6 being available as f2p and the general decline of 3D fighters are more responsible for the weak-ish sales than anything else. DoA6 still had hot waifus, just less sexualized, if even that:

https://youtu.be/oOdzRDFdpok?si=Dop3BfdtofjMCSHQ

Waifus and sex appeal can help sell a good game, and sometimes a crap game, but so many gamers seriously overstate their significance. Tekken > VF > Soul Calibur > DoA.

Last edited by Kyuu - on 30 June 2025