The Evolution — commonly known as “EVO” — game lineup was revealed on the night of Tuesday, February 6, and it contains several big-name fighting games. Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition and Tekken 2 are both included, as is Injustice 2 and both the Wii U and GameCube Super Smash Bros. games. But Arc System Works is the big winner, as its games BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, and Dragon Ball FighterZ will all be played. Both FighterZ and Guilty Gear will be played on Sunday, giving them the most exposure.
But perhaps more important than what games were included is the one game that was not: Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. The fighting game failed to take off in the same manner than Marvel vs. Capcom 3 did, with its art style and poor character roster drawing criticism from longtime fans. It didn’t help that FighterZ, another tag-team fighting game, released only a few months later. Infinite‘s player base has dropped considerably, and the game is already available for half its original price.
EVO 2017 included nine main games instead of this year’s eight — in addition to Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the tournament also included The King of Fighters XIV. The decision to swap out the relatively niche The King of Fighters with Dragon Ball FighterZ makes sense, but Capcom’s game looks like it was removed purely because fans didn’t stick around. The game sold well below expectations, only managing to move about 1 million units. Street Fighter V continues to do well for Capcom, however, with its post-release support helping to turn the game into a satisfying fighter.
In contrast, Dragon Ball FighterZ has already already topped 2 million units when factoring in physical shipments and digital sales — it will likely be longer before physical sales surpass that number. The game is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
EVO 2018 will take place in Las Vegas from August 3 through August 5.
