Marvel Tokon sells 485K copies on PS5 and Steam (@alineaanalytics estimates). PS5 accounts for 74% of that split, while Steam takes 26%. It’s made $33M in revenue across those platforms. The lower Steam share tracks, with many fighting games skewing to console due to easier-to-access couch multiplayer. Marvel Tokon’s Steam launch, though, was marred by performance issues, bugs, intrusive DRM, and no Linux support (so no proper Steam Deck compatibility). Arc has been patching hard, and many issues are already fixed, but first impressions are sticky. Tokon might have sold closer to 1M if the Steam stuff hadn’t been such an issue. Word of mouth was cut short. Our estimates show that about 75% of Marvel Tokon players live in North America, with the majority, of course, in the US. This helps explain why the PS5 physical share at 15.1% – lower than usual for a new PlayStation game. US players skew more digital than most regions, and this is a heavily American audience. Captain America, indeed. The PS5 audience overlap (the shared unique players between Tokon and other games) shows the hardcore fighting-game core tapped in. The entire top 10 by crossover is fighting games, with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves (8% crossover), Invincible VS (8%), and DNF Duel (7%) leading the way. Directional overlap with the mainstream is strong on PS5, as well: - 52% of PS5 Tokon players played Dragon Ball FighterZ - 49% Street Fighter 5 - 41% Mortal Kombat 1 - 39% Street Fighter 6 - 35% Tekken 7 Marvel fandom is helping push copies on this one. On PS5, 60% of Tokon’s PS5 players have played Spider-Man: Miles Morales, 57% Spider-Man 2, and 53% Marvel Rivals. Those numbers are higher than even the biggest fighting-game overlap (Dragon Ball FighterZ at 52%). As I covered earlier this week, Spider-Man in particular is very front of mind right now, thanks to the new movie. And Spidey is featured prominently on the artwork and trailers. Relatively speaking, fighting games are a pretty niche genre (Smash, Dragon Ball Z, and flagship franchises like Street Fighter, Tekken, and Mortal Kombat aside…). Even Riot couldn’t crack it, laying off around 80 people, roughly half the 2XKO team, in February due to soft player momentum. Despite being free-to-play, 2XKO has pulled in just 1M players on PS5. Meanwhile, Tokon is a paid, single-genre fighter that has done 485K in a week. One difference there (in addition to Riot fandom being mostly all PC) is the IP. Marvel is doing some lifting a niche genre can’t do on its own. That’s the bet PlayStation, Arc, and Marvel made, and – Steam wobbles aside – so far, so okay. More on the free Substack (link's in my profile there).

⚙️ Servers are back online! We have rolled out a number of performance improvements including: 🔥 Reduced CPU load to help improve overall responsiveness and reduce lag-related issues 🔥 Fixed a bug that could cause sudden performance drops during gameplay 🔥 Improved backend crash reporting so we can track down issues and improve stability faster More info on bug fixes and improvements on our Discord server: discord.com/invite/marveltok… Keep the feedback coming in, as we continue to improve the experience. The next battle starts now. See you online. 👊🔥

The #MARVELTōkon: Fighting Souls Open Beta starts soon! ⚔️ 🗓️ July 24 - 12:00 AM PDT - 7:00 AM UTC - 4:00 PM JST Pre-load begins 2 hours before the Open Beta goes live. Join us on Discord for all the latest updates: discord.com/invite/marveltok… Get ready to assemble your dream team! 🔥