[Jotaku]

For last few years I have played all anime games that includes team-based PvP, that are Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash, Black Clover: Quartet Knights, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, Fate Extella Link and also recently purchased Gundam Versus but I will exclude this one in this post because it is more likely mech game than anime game.

To tell the only fact, Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet (FB) has the most population if you look for the anime games that has population to play with. It is mainly because that it has huge anime fanbase, I believe.

The next anime game that had 2nd most population was Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash (PBS). PBS is sorely PvP focused game while FB has both coop and PvP. PBS was more competitive than FB at the first release because of PBS's leaderboard rank with fancy rank name and avatar like Master, Legend but there were no leaderboard rank in FB.

But as time goes by, PBS has become dead after about 8 months of its first release while FB kept keeping people playing the game. The main difference was that there was no meaningful update on PBS. They only released costume, outfit stuffs but never did any meaningful updates like new weapons and card type and new game type or map, and so on. That eventually made PBS multiplayer become dead after about 8 months. The game was really great though. So if PBS 2 ever releases, this must be what develop should consider. I think this is the most important anyways.

I believe PBS's PvP was really great experience overall because it is hard to see a single anime games that the multiplayer can go active for 8 months WITHOUT any update because, for example, Fate/EXTELLA Link went about only 1~2 month after the first release and become dead immediately. Black Clover: Quartet Knight PvP also went about only 1~2 months as well.

Additionally, games such as Black Clover: Quartet Knights and FB allowed Japanese players to play with, no region restriction. Only PBS and Fate/EXTELLA Link that are released by Marvelous had regional restriction that doesn't allow NA people to play with Japanese players.

2nd topic I want to discuss about is the profit. As long as I heard from the Yagyu, who worked in Marvelous EU as a community manager, PBS and Senran Kagura reflexions made the most profits among all Senran Kagura series. This is 2nd reason why Marvelous need to make PBS 2 in the future.

There was also network issue in PBS about getting disconnection (dc) while playing but I believe they already found the solution because I haven't found such problem in Fate/Extella Link, which is released by Marvelous after the release of PBS.

Recently there is an issue between Marvelous and Sony about sexual scene in the game. But I do not think that is much problem because those kinds of things in the game never made me playing PBS for many months up to now. What made us to play PBS for so long time was so much diversity in the gameplay such as card packs, costumes and accessories (yeah, I loved customizing my characters), PvP titles, weapons, being able to farm and level up through PvP but not in PvE, and so on. And they are actual factors that make the game actually fun. Of course, it is better to have such a fan service, but it is also true that they can sell the game to more customers in various ages if they removes nudities. I see the both pros and cons here. But if the game focuses to become multiplayer-focused game, it is more important to have more population as much as possible that won't make game being dead. But PBS was such a multiplayer-focused game. They could just delete singleplayer and only focused on the multiplayer but I believe this depends on the developer's preference.

Sadly PBS seems not to be considered that importantly by developers because PBS was designed to be sub-story of Senran Kagura's main series. But strangely it was the most successful among all its series.

We are still waiting for Senran Kagura 7even, but honestly I still doubt if it would be better than PBS in terms of multiplayer performance and how fun the multiplayer is. We will see.