DOA6 New Venus Character Could Skyrocket DOA6 Player Base

Before Dead or Alive 6 was released, Team NINJA seemed pretty confident when they stated that a Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation character would not make an appearance in the 3D fighter, but with the rising success of Venus Vacation it comes as no surprise that our favorite developer would recant their statements in favor of expanding their DOA6 player base to a new audience this March. This surprise character is a part of the Season 4 Pass, and can be purchased in several different skews if the SPs are not your forte. With this story we explore why Team NINJA recanted their official statements that could result in being one of their biggest & best business decisions in years for the fighting series.

Contrary to popular belief, Team NINJA has definitely toned the sexual nature down as they have promised for the 3D fighter. Rachel's Fiend skin was controversially censored, there is an option to censor select oufits, and even their offering of bikinis are not nearly as revealing as they were in Dead or Alive 5. The Venus Vacation character will not necessarily bring back Dead or Alive to the skimpy standards fighters were accustomed to, and not everyone plays Venus Vacation because it is a game with revealing outfits, but because they enjoy the dialogue between characters and the different level of experiences they can have with their favorites whether it be in a casino or volleyball court.

Never in a million years would a fighter from this community believed that the Xtreme series would surpass the fighter's popularity, but it has; and the Steam charts show this emphatically. Is it because Dead or Alive 6 is not currently the game fighters want, or was it inevitable based off the accessibility & marketing appeal from DOAX:VV?

According to Steam charts, DOA6 has 147 current players with 151 on a 30-day average, and the game continues to decline in numbers by about 3% each month. While those numbers are not great, Venus Vacation is currently boasting 602 active players right now with 1,840 on a 30-day average which is a 10% gain from thirty days ago.

Keep in mind this is only accounting the Steam version released 10 months ago that has limited characters and is still evolving. The complete game is much higher, with the combined sales of DOAX3 and DOAX3: Scarlet.

While at this point you could say "This sounds like a slam dunk for Team NINJA!" believe it or not there are still plenty of things that could go wrong. Honoka was released in Dead or Alive 5: Last Round to appeal to the same audience of Marie Rose, while Raidou was released to appeal the players that wanted another male character. This was predicted to be a hype release duo, but the only thing that wasn't flat about Honoka was her knockers, and Raidou had ZERO effect in the offline tournament scene.

The new Venus Vacation character MUST be more fun and play better than copycat Honoka & low-tier Marie Rose, and unlike DOA5:LR there will be no male counterpart alongside her release, which is a damn shame for a community that demands the return of DOA's strongest man; Leon. It's without question that it will be critical for Team NINJA to release a BLOODY BRILLIANT version update alongside this character to reduce the anger and frustration some will feel in their wait for a more masculine character selection.

While there are other demands on the DOA6 community wish-list, stages seems to be the second, or maybe most important inclusion of all. The stage selections have been a royal pain in the ass for players at tournaments and are only beginning to get better, and unless it's Dead or Alive 4's 'Seaside Market' another beach level will not help DOA6 spice up its sense of atmosphere and location. Team NINJA should be prioritizing classic favorites & new stages to keep DOA6 fresh with the regular character releases.

Not everyone is excited about this release, and for good reason, they said they weren't going to do it. But this decision could be met with a compromise if our needs as players are met and we continue to see encouragement, support and content we want from Team NINJA going (hopefully) into our second season of fighting entertainment.
 
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I hope (if it's not a new girl) that it's gonna be Sayuri, being a sweet and pure lady fighting with deadly crotch stuns. The sadistic nurse trope would work for me (and I can clearly see the nurse revival pack along with it).

Kanna would promote Nyotengu somehow, and maybe special story segments with Momiji and Rachel. I mean, why not develop them while you're at it.

Even Nagisa and Tamaki who I like would be cool Japanese girls but... That's it. Meh.

Monica would have cards gimmick... M'okay...

Would love to see a fresh revamped Leon. With purposes.
 
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If they really did specifically state that no DOAX character would be coming to DOA6, I guess it's reasonable to not trust anything TN says anymore. The truth probably lies in the easiest path to profit, these days.

I wouldn't say they've intentionally toned down the sexiness, besides the option to add black parts to any costume (which was a good idea in theory, for those who need it, but it looks ridiculous and looks more like black body paint), I think any toning down in comparison to past games is as a result of laziness and not specifically trying to tone things down. The there's no crazy swimsuits this time (yet?) because whenever they release a set, they "uniform" (AKA boringify) the costumes so that everyone gets pretty much the same thing rather than something more personalized, so chraracters known to wear more risque costumes don't get their style. As for Rachel's case, I think some people here have shown before that it already looked that way in one of the PSV NGs, so you can argue they were just trying to be accurate to that previous costume.

I actually considered that the Xtreme series had already been more popular than the base series for over a decade now, it just didn't translate into physical sales. First of all, the past Xtreme games have sold well compared to other DoA games, with the first selling at least 600K (based on the numbers I can find atm, I could swear I've read somewhere that it did even better than that), but the sales really dropped off for the 2nd game even if it still did ok. Sales numbers I've found for X3 Venus and Fortune show that it didn't do much better than X2 did (which isn't a bad number on its own, its just nothing amazing). I've just suspected that for a long time, DoA's girls and by extention the Xtreme series has been popular among a large doujin/hentai/mod/sfm crowd that do art and mods of the characters (not saying that's the only kind of person who would be into the series) but didn't put money into the series, let alone play the base series. Bur I'm not sure if that's even right for me to assume, though.

So statistics on Steam show Xtreme is being played way more players than DoA6, fine, but it's better to compare DoA6 with other fighting games, so I calculated the total averages for as many recent fightign games I could think of (I used all the monthly averages except for older ones when I just took the first 2 years of data, as stated) :

MK11: 3607.6 (if you ignore the massive first 2 months: 1755.1)
Tekken 7: 2562.4
DoAX VV: 1518.3 (just for the sake of comparison, and if you ignore the first month its 1375)

SF5: 1501.1
MKX: 1026 (first 2 years, and if you ignore the first 2 months: 694)
SC6: 841.5 (433.8 if you ignore the huge first 2 months' numbers)
MKKE: 536.75 (first 2 years... average for last year was 134.4)
GG Xrd R: 234.95 (first 2 years, but recent numbers are consistant with that)
Skullgirls: 214.8 (first 2 years, with the highest average month being 893... must have been 2nd Encore or something, I forgot what happened)
DOA6: 209.1 (160.9 if you ignore the first month)
KOFXIII: 171 (first 2 years, but the average has been so consistant since the 2nd month till today that I doubt it would change much if I did it all)
BlazBlue Cf: 172
BlazBlue CTG: 159
UNIB Latest: 150.65

DOA5LR: 99 (first 2 years... average for the last year was: 49.3)
KOFXIV: 96.4
UMvC3: 65.3 (If you take away first month: 54.6. It did decent numbers its first few months, then it tapered off into 30-60 territory)

SFxT: 47.9 (first 2 years)
KI: 39.9
SF30th: 37.3
MvCi: I'm not gonna bother. It had some decent activity for a few months for some reason, but majority of its life has been 10-15

And that's not taking into consideration that for DoA and probably most of these other games, the preferred platform is most likely PS4, meanwhile VV is not even on the PS4 (plus there's also Xbox One numers to consider for some of these, including DOA6). I don't think DoAX-exclusive players would give a damn about a VV character being added to the base game. Why would they when they have more

Still, I find the data there kinda eye opening in some respects. I think DoA6 is actually doing pretty average atm as far as fighting games go. Also, not to defend DoA6, but I don't think how well made a fighting game is has anything to do with its success or popularity. Otherwise, the VF series would still be alive and would have the mainstreme rep that series like SF and MK have today. I think its about time Sega tries one more time with VF though, honestly. If there's any time for a VF to do well, it's now.

I think Marie Rose and Honoka were brought into DoA or DoAX (don't know if they were specifically conceived for one series or the other, or simultaneously like I believe with Lisa), simply because they knew they would be popular tropes in Japan, regardless of whither they were designed for DoAX or the base series. And they were right, just remember that poll they did. As for Raidou, I think he was honestly just added in lazily, both in terms of story and design, just to fill out the roster... but that's the typical kind of laziness as far as fighting games go in general, so I actually wouldn't knock them for that one (it's the same case with Phase 4... at least Alpha 152 was a Kasumi with a lot of work done on her, not to mention an homage to Dural).

Honestly, I'm a little surprised that TN changed their mind about bringing a VV character into the main series. As I saw each of the new VV characters being revealed, I considered the possibility of them ever being brougth to DoA6, but ultimately ruled it out because they all seemed way too specifically designed for a game like VV. Its like if Tekken 7 got Summer Lesson characters as fighters. The only exception was Kanna, ONLY because of her Oni design. Personally, my only hope is that if we have to get one of them that it's that 24 year old mother-type (lol, maaann...) who's name keeps escaping me, but even then I don't see myself playing her much. I think this is honestly already another mistake on TN's part and probably another aspect of them being lazy with the series these days. I'd probably be willing to bet money that it's gonna be Kanna, too (dammit, why couldn't it be the Kanna from Sakurai Taisen? ;_; )

I don't have much hope for DoA6 anymore atm. Looking the the circumstance of where TN's focus is these days and how DoA6 has been turning out with its sporadic level of support, I think it's reasonable to believe that DoA isn't much of a priority for TN right now. I mean I've gotten my hopes up a bit when there were updates with a bit of substance, and little things like adding a free costume with every update for a little while... but then they stop doing the little good things they start. Not even the intro/winpose updates. And the only stage they've added so far was the beyond sub-par Zack's Island stage (the Dolphin danger zone was literally all it had going for it, other than that it's just really another boring cramped square). If the stages they add in the future are gonna be at that level then I don't really care.

I was playing DoA6 on a consistant basis since release until this past December (started on PS4 at launch, PS4 died, switched to XBO). I stopped to replay DoA1-DoA4 instead... lol (THOSE DOA2 STAGES <3). I'll go back to DoA6 some time to try out Rachel, who I bought but haven't tried out yet. Other than that, I don't know.
 
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I hope (if it's not a new girl) that it's gonna be Sayuri, being a sweet and pure lady fighting with deadly crotch stuns. The sadistic nurse trope would work for me (and I can clearly see the nurse revival pack along with it).

Kanna would promote Nyotengu somehow, and maybe special story segments with Momiji and Rachel. I mean, why not develop them while you're at it.

Monica would have cards gimmick... M'okay..

Oh yeah, Sayuri, that's the name I keep forgetting. Yeah, that's probably the only one I wouldn't feel like the game was made worse by. And she's a 24 year old human woman, finally, the game needs more seniors! She's like, what, a year away from becoming a dreaded Christmas Cake? TN would have guts to choose her over the others!

Monica would be jokes. Nikki, Irene, and Miyako be like: "Really?? A system voice over us!?". Every match should start with her saying "Get Ready Fight" herself, and everytime she wins the only thing she should say is "winner!".

But yeah, like I said, I'm sure it's gonna be Kanna. If I was a gambler I'd put money on it. Then again, if they have data on who the most popular character in VV is they'll more likely go with that, I bet. TN has become the type to throw away anyone who doesn't win polls.
 
I don't have much hope for DoA6 anymore atm. Looking the the circumstance of where TN's focus is these days and how DoA6 has been turning out with its sporadic level of support, I think it's reasonable to believe that DoA isn't much of a priority for TN right now. I mean I've gotten my hopes up a bit when there were updates with a bit of substance, and little things like adding a free costume with every update for a little while... but then they stop doing the little good things they start. Not even the intro/winpose updates. And the only stage they've added so far was the beyond sub-par Zack's Island stage (the Dolphin danger zone was literally all it had going for it, other than that it's just really another boring cramped square). If the stages they add in the future are gonna be at that level then I don't really care.

To be fair, the Seaside Eden stage still looks amazing and is still a very solid stage. It kicks the shit out of any SCVI stage easily and is better than any Tekken 7 stage easily aside from maybe Howard Estate. Though, yes, DOA6 definitely could use a bit more stages.
 
Every night I have a new nightmare about what kind of “seductive” win poses they’ll give Kanna :oops: Anyway, see reason to believe XVV players will move to 6 because of this.
 
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I don’t know if they would necessarily boost DOA6’s popularity. I believe the only things that could boost DOA’s popularity is
-them rebooting the entire series, rewriting characters in a more serious matter.
- Make the seasonpasses cheaper.
- Be more versatile with the DLC releases, for the ENTIRE cast. Adding a male character from time to time.
- Change the game’s mechanics
- fixing stages that are banned so they can be viable in the tournament setting.
- Fixing and Adding gamemodes and adding more ways to spend the Zack coins on.
 
I don’t know if they would necessarily boost DOA6’s popularity. I believe the only things that could boost DOA’s popularity is
-them rebooting the entire series, rewriting characters in a more serious matter.
- Make the seasonpasses cheaper.
- Be more versatile with the DLC releases, for the ENTIRE cast. Adding a male character from time to time.
- Change the game’s mechanics
- fixing stages that are banned so they can be viable in the tournament setting.
- Fixing and Adding gamemodes and adding more ways to spend the Zack coins on.
KT: “NEVER! YOU BUY WHATEVER I MAKE AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!!!!”
 
The Venus Vacation character will not necessarily bring back Dead or Alive to the skimpy standards fighters were accustomed to

That is a no brainer, since in order to get DOA back to skimpy standards we would need certain outfits like Pleione (Tina), Azurite (Christie), Christie's Halloween 2014 Costume, Ayane's Halloween 2014 Costume, & would've been Fiend costume (NG2+ Blue & DOA5U), adding a character wouldn't do much. That's really going to depend on what DOA6 Team has to offer DLC whether reused or brand new. So far we got the Christie's Leotard, Lisa's Deluxe, La Mariposa DOA4, Rachel's NG Costume, & Cyber Costumes which is decent, just not on DOA5 level (some unlockables & DLC).

Never in a million years would a fighter from this community believed that the Xtreme series would surpass the fighter's popularity, but it has; and the Steam charts show this emphatically. Is it because Dead or Alive 6 is not currently the game fighters want, or was it inevitable based off the accessibility & marketing appeal from DOAX:VV?

According to Steam charts, DOA6 has 147 current players with 151 on a 30-day average, and the game continues to decline in numbers by about 3% each month. While those numbers are not great, Venus Vacation is currently boasting 602 active players right now with 1,840 on a 30-day average which is a 10% gain from thirty days ago.

Keep in mind this is only accounting the Steam version released 10 months ago that has limited characters and is still evolving. The complete game is much higher, with the combined sales of DOAX3 and DOAX3: Scarlet.

Honestly I would expect something similar where a game (Xtreme brand) is a bikini-fest & prevy features included having success compare to a game (DOA6) where you don't have much over top design, cover skin (from a design that was previously skimpy), & lacks features just isn't as successful. Games would mainly do better Uncut rather than Edited/Toned Down/Censored like MK1 & Omega Labyrinth Life.

From someone who cares about the DOA brand for its content, lets just say DOA6 is the game I'm bit mixed with, and prefers what DOA5 had offer through out its life span from updates & DLC. Then DOAXVV was a game I would've wanted to play, but I would need to follow instructions on how to play DOAXVV Steam Version (because I understand English) since its from Asia region, or would need to learn Japanese to understand the menus or what their saying on DMM version (since they didn't offer English options like DOAX3).

The best move for DOA6/DOA fighter would start offering designs similar the costumes I mention, if certain consoles like Playstation (if they intend to release it there) doesn't approve designs skip their release in favor of other platforms like Xbox One, Steam, & Switch, or don't like how certain groups act in certain countries like the West skip the Western releases like DOAX3/Scarlet did.

For Season Pass 4, I already prefer the Cyber design, and looking forward to what VV girl we wound up getting since their getting the Lisa treatment (My only hope is Kanna).

If adding one VV character actually does boost DOA6's popularity then God help us. They'll add them all

Bring it.
 
I don’t know if they would necessarily boost DOA6’s popularity. I believe the only things that could boost DOA’s popularity is
-them rebooting the entire series, rewriting characters in a more serious matter.
- Make the seasonpasses cheaper.
- Be more versatile with the DLC releases, for the ENTIRE cast. Adding a male character from time to time.
- Change the game’s mechanics
- fixing stages that are banned so they can be viable in the tournament setting.
- Fixing and Adding gamemodes and adding more ways to spend the Zack coins on.
Do a SC5. Make everyone hate the characters and let the game die almost instantly. Then, TN will realize what made people like DOA and they'll create a DOA game on the level of SC6. Holds are the first things that need to be changed. No one takes DOA seriously because of them.

While at this point you could say "This sounds like a slam dunk for Team NINJA!" believe it or not there are still plenty of things that could go wrong. Honoka was released in Dead or Alive 5: Last Round to appeal to the same audience of Marie Rose, while Raidou was released to appeal the players that wanted another male character. This was predicted to be a hype release duo, but the only thing that wasn't flat about Honoka was her knockers, and Raidou had ZERO effect in the offline tournament scene.

The new Venus Vacation character MUST be more fun and play better than copycat Honoka & low-tier Marie Rose, and unlike DOA5:LR there will be no male counterpart alongside her release, which is a damn shame for a community that demands the return of DOA's strongest man; Leon
This article reads like pure scapegoating where Marie and Honoka are the scapegoats. The VV girl has to be better than Marie and Honoka, the 2 characters that originated from DOA5, but not the other boring or low-tier DLC characters from 5?

If the community wants to grow I think it needs to find the real reason as to why it's not growing instead of blaming characters that came later into DOA5's life. This is the only place still constantly blaming Marie and Honoka for everything. Move on and find the real reason why this game isn't growing. No one cares about the "anime" characters as much as you guys do.
 
While I'm not a fan of MR and Honoka, I don't think they make any difference as to the base game being more or less popular. I don't think any one character they add will make any difference, unless maybe it's a guest character from another more popular/respected series, like what happened when they added multiple VF characters to DoA5. I can't count the amount of times I've read that people picked up DoA5 just because it had VF characters. But even that would be a band-aid sollution, just a temporary fix. DoA6 also tried to make the game's fighting look more violent and painful using the blood effects and whatnot, that doesn't seem to have helped either.

[TBH though, it might not have helped DoA's mainstreme rep/image in the west to add what most people would consider a loli character to a game that was already being derided for sexual content. A character like that wouldn't stand out as much in a 2D and more heavily anime game, but there's no other characters like that in other 3D fighting games (not even Lucky Chloe looks that young). It might have been better to keep a character like that in the DoAX series.] - I just typed this and I thought... "wait, Talim..." so I was just about to delete this part but then I decided to leave it. I mean, I could argue that talim isn't a loli, she's just a very young character and isn't sexualized the way MR is (plus Talim is a million times more original in her design). But still, maybe I should stick with what I said about adding any one character not beign the reason for making or breaking the game. This is all part of the digging. We gotta dig deep to find the truth!

I think DoA needs to do two things - there needs to be a draw to bring people in, something that surprises the masses to want to try the game out... then when it has that attention, it needs to keep it with substance that's constantly maintained and refined. The idea of "come for the beauty, stay for the deep and solid gameplay" was a perfectly good idea, but they just didn't execute the 2nd part right this time with DoA6. In fact it's arguable that they didn't really do the first part as good as they could have this time either. Honestly, what can you expect when you've outsourced the game so much? Then it just becomes a product for cash, not a creation of passion. You find an incredibly beautiful statue that seems to sparkle, but you just get the feeling there isn't something right about it, so you get in for a closer inspection and realize it's covered in bugs... at this point you either try to rationalize that it's fine or you get the hell away from it. Outsourcing parts of a game can be a good thing if it's being used the right way, but I think they're using it in DoA to fill in gaps in development rather than bolster it. I wonder if there's even proper communcation and oversight over anything being outsourced.
 
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Do a SC5. Make everyone hate the characters and let the game die almost instantly. Then, TN will realize what made people like DOA and they'll create a DOA game on the level of SC6. Holds are the first things that need to be changed. No one takes DOA seriously because of them.


This article reads like pure scapegoating where Marie and Honoka are the scapegoats. The VV girl has to be better than Marie and Honoka, the 2 characters that originated from DOA5, but not the other boring or low-tier DLC characters from 5?

If the community wants to grow I think it needs to find the real reason as to why it's not growing instead of blaming characters that came later into DOA5's life. This is the only place still constantly blaming Marie and Honoka for everything. Move on and find the real reason why this game isn't growing. No one cares about the "anime" characters as much as you guys do.
Holds has always been a part of DOA’s gameplay. Getting rid of that only to make it more like Tekken or other fighters is a bad idea. DOA always had holds and it should stay that way. People don’t take DOA seriously because of many other reasons, I don’t think the holds are the main issue.
 
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