Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is an absolute highlight in the tag-team fighting game genre, but good reviews haven’t translated into strong sales in Japan. In fact, it’s reportedly one of developer Arc System Works’ worst performing games on its home turf.
Famitsu recently published its estimated sales data for the first two weeks of the month, charting the best-selling physical games in Japan during that time, but Marvel Tokon only managed to claw onto the chart with 2,814 PS5 discs sold for its first week on sale. In the following week, Marvel Tokon was nowhere to be found in Famitsu’s top 30, meaning it failed to match the 1,444 copies that Super Mario Wonder’s Switch 2 Edition managed. Ouch. (Thanks, Gematsu.)
According to Game Data Library – a website that tracks how many copies physical games have sold in Japan – Marvel Tokon’s first week was “the worst launch for an Arc System fighter” in the country, “excluding super niche stuff like DNF Duel” and well under the majority of games in the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue series. Even the oft-forgotten Under Night In-Birth outsold Marvel Tokon in its launch period.
“I was thinking 10k was pessimistic, but now even with 70% digital sales it’s a very lackluster result,” the outlet tweets. “Needless to say it’s also well under all the Marvel vs. Capcom games, hell, it did less than half of the Marvel Fighting Collection, and the retail version was late!”
Another report from Alinea Analytics estimated that Marvel Tokon actually sold 485,000 copies globally across Steam and PS5 over the course of its first week, so there’s seemingly a gaping chasm between how warmly the game was received in Japan and the rest of the world.
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls itself is a great time. GamesRadar’s review called it the “prettiest fighting game in years and a rousing comeback for the Marvel tag fighter,” so what went wrong? Perhaps Marvel’s waning superpowers in Japan have something to do with it. Or perhaps it’s PlayStation’s allure that’s fading – during the week of August 10, only three PS5 games crawled onto the chart dominated by Nintendo releases.