Chances of seeing DBZ Games come to PC?

Discussion of all things related to Dragon Ball video games (console and portable games, arcade versions, etc.) from the entire franchise's history.

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Super Sayian Prime
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Re: Chances of seeing DBZ Games come to PC?

Post by Super Sayian Prime » Mon Sep 22, 2014 11:11 pm

There's a few reasons why Dragon Ball's absence from PCs wasn't a shocker.

#1 - Insularity of publishers. Bandai Namco is a Japanese company. Traditional PC gaming is nigh nonexistent in that market. As such, their view on the platform has been that it's not viable for non-service (MMOs, F2P titles, etc.) games. This has changed as the company's western branches have had greater say in what happens.

#2 - During Dragon Ball's early-mid 2000s western heyday, PC gaming was in decline in the US.
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In that era, console and handheld gaming revenues were higher and still growing.

#3 - Difficulty with multi-platform development. Porting the PS2 games to PC during their initial run would probably have been a hard thing to do. PC gaming hardware was too fragmented and way too different from PS2's to make a port worthwhile when combined with #1 and #2. Xbox 360, PS4 and XB1 might as well be PCs, so ports from modern consoles aren't nearly as troublesome.

It should be said that Atari were planning a PC-exclusive FPS Dragon Ball game in 2002:
Finally, the PC will have a Dragon Ball Z game, too. Rinde isn't saying much about it except the game will be a first-person action game and that it is scheduled for release in time for the holidays at the end of the year. Rinde, though, hints that "we [Infogrames] will be utilizing a proven 3D action engine" to run the game. Quake? Lithtech? It's all conjecture, but Infogrames does publish PC games based on the Unreal engine.
Most of the games in that article never saw a release.
"I like the money it brings in, but Dragon Ball Heroes is the worst. That's actually the real reason I decided to start working on new material. I was afraid Bandai would make something irredeemably stupid like Super Saiyan 4 Broly." - Akira Toriyama, made up interview, 2013.

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