In a press release and social media posts shared this week, Bandai Namco announced that Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO has sold five million copies worldwide:

DRAGON BALL: SPARKING! ZERO SELLS MORE THAN 5 MILLION UNITS WORLDWIDE
Long Awaited Sequel in the BUDOKAI TENKAICHI Series Becomes the Fastest Selling DRAGON BALL Console Game Ever

Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe S.A.S. today announced DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO, the first sequel in more than 15 years in the legendary DRAGON BALL Z: BUDOKAI TENKAICHI series, has surpassed a total of 5 million units sold worldwide since its launch. After releasing to critical acclaim this past October, the title is now the fastest-selling DRAGON BALL console game to-date. DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.

Developed by Spike Chunsoft, DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO pushes the envelope for gameplay and features in an arena brawler. Harnessing the power of Unreal® Engine 5, the game delivers stunning true-to-the-anime visuals and genre-defining features with lightning-paced combat and large destructible environments. Players embraced the game for its action-packed gameplay modes including online and co-op multiplayer, Episode Battle mode where players can re-live storied battles from the globally beloved DRAGON BALL anime series, and Custom Battle to create, play, and share UGC battles using a robust selection of available characters, stages, and unique items.

More recently, the game released the “Hero of Justice” DLC pack, adding 11 new fighters to the expansive roster of 182 characters, such as Gohan Beast, Cell Max, Gamma 1 and Gamma 2.

These features and modes along with frequent downloadable content updates and official sanctioned tournaments have helped make DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO one of the most critically acclaimed game titles in the globally beloved anime franchise.

Sparking! ZERO‘s five million sales (in its first four months here) can be placed in context with the sales of other recent games:

• Back in 2018, Dragon Ball FighterZ shipped two million copies in its first week, which Bandai Namco claimed at the time made it the franchise’s “fastest shipping” release for the franchise.
• Back in 2020, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot sold — not just shipped — two million copies in its first two months.
• In May 2023, Bandai Namco announced that both Dragon Ball FighterZ and Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 had independently shipped and sold (written differently in the same announcement) ten million copies each.

Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO released on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (via Steam) 10 October 2024 in Japan, and 11 October 2024 internationally. As opposed to the completely separate Dragon Ball Z (“Budokai”) series developed by Dimps which came before it, the Sparking! series — developed instead by Spike — featured 3D arenas with an over-the-shoulder camera angle. The new game’s title of Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO falls more in line with the original trilogy’s naming scheme in Japanese. The three Sparking! games — the original, NEO!, and METEOR — hit the PlayStation 2 over the course of 2005 to 2007, with the Nintendo Wii also receiving ports of the second and third games. The game series was released numerically under the “Budokai Tenkaichi” moniker internationally. A fourth games — Tag Vs. in Japan; Tenkaichi Tag Team internationally — was released on the PlayStation Portable in 2010. Spike (as Spike Chunsoft) later went on to also develop the crossover fighting games J-Stars Victory VS in 2014 and Jump Force in 2019.