When Bandai Namco took the stage at The Game Awards 2017 and asked if the souls of players still burn, it revealed that the Soulcalibur series was in fact not dead. It revealed Soulcalibur 6, the first real follow-up to the franchise in seemingly forever, which was going back to what made the series so great. Classic fighters like Siegfried, Sophitia, and Mitsurugi would have some new mechanics like special moves to help enhance the traditional gameplay.
However, throughout all the marketing and character reveals, the development team failed to mention that this could be the last game in the series. Producer Motohiro Okubo spoke to DualShockers at Gamescom 2018 and stated that the IP wasn’t doing so well. Why? “The first thing is that the IP itself of the SoulCalibur franchise had low expectations from the company. It was actually facing a crisis of maybe disappearing. It took time for me to convince the company,” said Okubo via a translator.
When asked if Soulcalibur 6 will be the last title in the series if it doesn’t sell that well, Okubo said, “Yeah, that’s right.” However, when speaking without a translator, Okubo noted that the development team doesn’t want to blackmail users into picking it up. “We don’t want to blackmail the users by saying that it could be the last one, but as it is, yes.”
Nevertheless, even if this is the last Soulcalibur, the development team is sticking to its guns and making the game they want to make. “Since the SoulCalibur brand is facing a crisis, we have nothing to lose, so we just decided to do what we want to do.”
Whether that will pay off or not remains to be seen. Soulcalibur 6 will release on October 19th for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
