Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball franchise has touched all aspects of modern anime and gaming culture, spreading even further into the worlds of professional wrestling, hip-hop, street fashion, and gym culture. The image that most often comes to mind for fans – or even casual onlookers – is one of ripped brawlers screaming their lungs out enveloped by glowing auras. And it’s exactly this hype that has fueled the phenomenal success of the latest game: Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero.
Heavily promoted at Tokyo Game Show 2024, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is an anime arena fighting game featuring characters from across the Dragon Ball franchise’s many iterations. Dragon Ball popularized the anime arena fighter subgenre with its Budokai Tenkaichi series, the last entry of which was released back in 2007. 17 long years later, publisher Bandai Namco and developer Spike Chunsoft have created a spiritual successor to Budokai Tenkaichi that recaptures the fan service and pulse-pounding excitement of the original series.
In this article, we’re looking at the overwhelming response to Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero on live-streaming platforms, including how it measures up to other popular fighting games.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero Receives A Spirit Bomb of Global Support
As with many recent releases, like Silent Hill 2 Remake, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero had two separate release dates: An early access date for a higher price on the 8th of October, and a full release date on the 11th of October. For this analysis, the game’s debut week is taken from the early access date.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero was an immediate success upon its release, with 14.7M hours watched in its debut week and a peak viewership of 352K. Perhaps most impressive is the monumental airtime generated for the game: Streamers around the world collectively aired 612K hours of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero content. These live-streaming figures match up with the game’s massive player base, hitting 91K concurrent players during early access despite costing over $100 USD (!). To put that in perspective, the next highest Dragon Ball game was Dragon Ball FighterZ with an all-time peak of 44K concurrent players.
As mentioned earlier regarding Dragon Ball’s immense popularity, it’s not hard to see why the game was so successful. But another couple of factors may have elevated what would have already been a successful title. Toriyama’s passing earlier this year increased viewership for all games with his signature art style, including SAND LAND and Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake. Additionally, the game’s single-player mode has been highly praised, yet the brutal challenge has filtered out players and created memes around the difficulty of fighting Great Ape Vegeta.
Regarding top streamers, The Grefg dedicated himself to Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero with 116 hours of airtime, generating a massive 1.7M hours watched – more than four times the next most watched streamer. However, second and third place streamers Junichi Kato and zackrawrr had far higher average concurrent viewerships with shorter streams and large online followings, with average minute audiences (AMAs) of 43K and 42K, respectively.
Interestingly, the official Bandai Namco Steam channel also produced a significant amount of viewership for the game with 3.9M hours watched In the debut week alone. On one hand, this could mean players are turning to developer streams on Steam for insight into the game upon release. However, this stream also runs on the Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero store page on Steam – so this could simply be passive viewership rather than actual engaged viewers.
Crowning a New King of Fighting Games and Anime Arena Fighters
To put in perspective just how impressive this debut performance is, it’s worth comparing Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero to other fighting games on live streaming. Among the full array of fighting games, regardless of subgenre, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero came out on top with its 14.7M hours watched. The only titles that came close were platform fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (14.2M) and 2D fighter Street Fighter 6 (13.6M). Fighting games have always been vital to live-streaming success in Japan (as seen with events like EVO Japan), but this success is more about global viewership. This is backed up by Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero’s high concurrent player count (for scale, Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 reached peak concurrent player counts of just 70.5K and 50K, respectively).
Within its niche as an anime arena fighter, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero redefined what the genre could do in terms of viewership. Other anime arena fighters settle for far lower debut viewerships like Demon Slayer – The Hinokami Chronicles (616.5K) and My Hero One’s Justice 2 (69K). Anime arena fighters should be far more popular however: Their appeal as sandbox games for fan fiction battles is underutilized by marketing campaigns. Canon-breaking missions and gigantic rosters of characters (182 for Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero) are a fantastic hook for viewers online.
The Dragon Ball Franchise Thrives on Live-streaming Platforms
Although Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero’s success is unparalleled, it’s still a fair representation of Dragon Ball IP on live streaming. Over the past 12 months, Dragon Ball games have generated 45.9M hours watched in total (meaning Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero accounts for roughly one-third of this number). Even more powerful, this viewership comes from a diverse array of 63 titles covering 12 genres. Dragon Ball’s greatest strength is its characters and its legacy, and this recognizable iconography makes the series highly adaptable. One would assume that currently popular anime like One Piece will eventually be able to match this level of hype – but they require a couple of stand-out titles of exceptional quality gameplay-wise to establish themselves as more than just fodder for shovelware.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero has fantastic replayability which will ensure a long tail of viewership, plus an expected three waves of DLC planned around still-releasing properties like Dragon Ball Daima. Bandai Namco had been betting big on Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero to reach its end-of-year targets, and no doubt this has paid off – although they’re still reportedly tightening their belts when it comes to new projects. Stream Hatchet will watch to see how the publisher capitalizes on high sales of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero moving forward.
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