Forum - View topicNEWS: SNK CEO Kenji Matsubara Steps Down, Transitions to Advisory Role
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mdo7
 Posts: 8226 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Uh, I wonder why the shake-up.
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seoulman1985
 Posts: 128 |
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Have the initial sales figures for City of the Wolves been underwhelming?
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zztop
Posts: 715 |
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Word is the game only sold like 6000+ copies ever since it came out. Apparently some people were turned off by having the 2 guest fighter characters, the celebrity footballer and celebrity DJ, seemingly due to SNK trying to satisfy its current owner, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (the footballer is signed on a team owned by the prince, the DJ is the prince's favourite artiste). |
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Blue Senpai
Posts: 52 |
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I would say they're about as well as anyone could reasonably expect Fatal Fury to do in 2025. The game has always been a niche fighter in a sea of other fighting games. If anyone thought it was going to sell millions that is their own fault. |
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NJ_
 Posts: 3409 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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Apparently that's for physical copies in Japan only. https://www.famitsu.com/article/202505/41815 https://www.gematsu.com/2025/05/famitsu-sales-4-21-25-5-4-25
Not sure about elsewhere but I know the response in Latin America to it's prices haven't been good. Meanwhile the game seems to have done better digitally on PC. https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2025/may/16/fatal-fury-steam-bestseller/ https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topnewreleases/april_2025 |
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Stelman257
Posts: 370 |
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The game has, commercially, been an absolute flop. Now I don't mean that in regards to other fighting games. I think it's sold about as well as Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising, maybe even a bit better than that game, and that game is generally considered a niche, but successful game played by a solid amount of people. GBVSR keeps getting new DLC released too, so the fact that CotW is outperforming it on Steam even by a little bit means it's doing pretty decent for a fighting game. The problem lies in how much the owners at Saudi Arabia expected the game to sell, because of the absolutely ridiculous and insane amount of money they spent on HEAVILY marketing the game. In all the wrong places. https://bsky.app/profile/apzonerunner.com/post/3lp72ox2dks2u Obviously they put Ronaldo and Salvatore in the game, and Ronaldo at the very least definitely wasn't a cheap inclusion. An extremely unwelcome one to be sure, but still an expensive waste. And to quote this article about the other ways they spent a fortune on marketing:
"Big-budget promotional stunts" is an accurate description of what all this was. This is millions spent on marketing, maybe even the double or triple million digits. Far more than what was spent on the game itself that's for sure. All at the whims of the Saudi brass. It's just speculation of course, but signs points to Kenji Matsubara's firing from his position as CEO likely being the Saudi owners coming down on them after the game failed to sell what they probably expected to be Grand Theft Auto numbers or something truly insane like that. My heart really goes out to all the developers and people at SnK, I really hope they all do alright, and that the future of this game isn't grim because of this. |
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Nate148
Posts: 656 |
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hint all the marketing was done with things owned by Saudi media fund I doubt it cost the prince much to do any of it.
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seoulman1985
Posts: 128 |
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Fans have largely warmed to Salvatore it seems, and he APPEARS to love the fighting game community, assuming his words and actions aren't an act for his 'royal friend.'
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Nionel
 Posts: 632 Location: Nebraska |
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This is unfortunate news and I hope it doesn't hurt the company going forward. They're recent releases have been well done and I want to get Fatal Fury, but it's tough to justify pay $60 for a game that I'm going to need to keep buying additional content for it. Especially when a complete edition will come in a couple of years with more content at a lower price.
For example, I bought King of Fighters XV last year with all the content for less than what it was when it launched in 2022. I enjoy the company's games and I like supporting them, but I can only rebuy KoF '98 and 2002 so many times. |
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Nate148
Posts: 656 |
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Stelman257
Posts: 370 |
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Not how money and these things work unfortunately, and even if it was a drop in the bucket for the prince, you can see it in the links I posted. The Saudi brass expected way bigger sales from the game, that it realistically was never going to give them. |
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Nekbone
Posts: 210 |
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That's the only way to play modern fighting games if you ask me. Or most games if we're being honest. But fighting games especially lack a lot of content and most of the replay value will be playing against other players. If you don't care about competitive modes or trying to go for some esports tournament with it then it's best to just wait until it's cheap so you can mess around in it from time to time alone or with friends. At the very least people can't blame lack of marketing for it not selling GTA numbers. They tried their damndest to get the word out there about Fatal Fury in all kinds of avenues from appealing to soccer fans, wrestling fans, and big streamer fans. People just don't care about Fatal Fury.. Although given how much of a fan the Prince is of SNK which is why he bought it I wonder how much he cares about the financial success and isn't just satisfied with there being a new game out there. If I was rich I'd finance the revival of old game series I like and wouldn't care one bit if they sold well to the public or not so long as I got what I want. |
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 936 |
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They really didn't. They got the name out there, but very rarely did they actually show the game or why people should be interested in it. They just expected that throwing money around and getting big streamers or Cinco de Mayo boxing events to bring it up was enough to get random non-fighting game fans to buy it And just want to mention that not all of the marketing pushes were from Saudi-owned properties. They got freaking Ado to do a song less than week ago |
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pushknife
 Posts: 54 |
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If someone actually refused to buy the game over an insignificant issue like two characters they don't care about are in it then they weren't SNK fans in the first place. The two guest characters more than likely had zero impact on the games sales. All the Ronaldo hate is weird to me when the guy is so beloved and arguably the face of football and he can just post a picture on X and get 1 million likes. But I realize it's sports and I'm sure people hate him based on that alone given how sports fans can be. Maybe they're all Messi fans and wanted him instead 
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EmeraldSaucer
Posts: 936 |
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Yeah, it's definitely that and not the multiple ongoing investigations regarding sexual assault, you figured it out |
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