Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and its predecessors defined an entire generation, so there were high expectations for Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO. Luckily, the nearly 20-year wait was worth it, as we now have one of the most complete and entertaining titles in the franchise. Its positive reception is reflected in its massive popularity on PC.
Spike Chunsoft and Bandai Namco’s game will officially release on October 11, 2024, but those who pre-ordered the Deluxe and Ultimate Editions received 3-day early access. Surprisingly, this limited launch was enough to shatter all records within the saga and other fighting games on Steam.
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Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO smashes Steam records with over 90,000 concurrent players
Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO debuted in early access on October 8 with great success, reaching an impressive peak of 91,005 simultaneous players on its first day. At the time of writing, there are 65,723 players online on PC.
This achievement makes the title based on Akira Toriyama’s manga and Toei Animation’s anime the most-played premium fighting game in Steam history. To put this in context, it far surpassed the records of Street Fighter 6 (70,573), TEKKEN 8 (49,977), and Mortal Kombat 1 (38,129).
Even more surprising, the arena fighter also surpassed the peak of Dragon Ball FighterZ, which gathered 44,303 players during its 2018 launch.
However, Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO was unable to surpass MultiVersus, the popular free-to-play game from Warner Bros. Games and Player First Games, which launched in 2022 with 153,433 concurrent users. That said, this comparison is somewhat unfair, as the latter is a free game accessible to everyone.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of these numbers is that Bandai Namco’s game is still in early access, meaning players had to pay at least $100 USD to play earlier this week. It’s likely the game will break its own record during the official launch.
Of course, it’s impossible to know how many people played on Xbox and PlayStation during the early access period; however, we should note that the title based on the anime series topped the sales charts in the days leading up to its release.
But tell us, have you played it? What do you think? Do you recommend it? Let us know in the comments.
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