I don’t want to bore you with a wall of text, if you want to know why you should play fighting games there is a great speech of Patrick Miller about that. The presentation is terrible but the content is gold.
(209) Why I Play Fighting Games - Leveling Up IRL - YouTube
In a fighting game there is no hand holding, it is you against the other player, there is no place to hide, or a team member to blame. You have no other choice other than ‘git gud’ or just abandon the game and make up a lousy excuse about why you don’t like fighting games.
In a fighting game gameplay is almost everything. You character has to look awesome too, but other than that the game is pure gameplay. No slow walk and talk, no pretentious story.
Fighting games on XBOX
Sadly the XBOX is not the best place to play fighting games. Sony exclusivity contracts are way more effective than Microsoft acquisitions. Street Fighter V is PS4 exclusive and Tekken 7 running at 720p even on One X/Series XS consoles is borderline insulting to xbox users.
Sadly the most exciting new game to be released, Guilty Gear Strive is also only on PC and PS5/PS4.
I think there is still hope to get Street Fighter 6 and KOF XV on XBOX Series XS but who knows.
At the moment the best fighting games to play on XBOX are Mortal Kombat 11 and Killer Instinct. If you don’t care about playing online Samurai Showdown is really good but sadly it has very bad netcode.
FGC
The fighting game community is not on its best moment. Evo was cancelled due to allegations of misconduct by one of the organizers. Also Fighting games shine when playing locally. Sadly that’s nearly impossible now due to COVID.
There is still some great people to follow: (wip)
I did not want to call the thread OT because at the moment I don’t have time to create a nice shinny threat starter. Maybe in the future.
You are more than welcome say hi if you play fighting games or you are curious to try. Say what game you play , what games you would love to see on XBOX, what you think about the FGC…
I was just playing some Street Fighter IV with my kids today. I love fighting games, I’m not good at them at all, but I love the colorful character designs and playing some casual couch multiplayer. Street Fighter and Soul Calibur are my favorite fighting series.
I want Sega to bring back Virtua Fighter. I want Street Fighter to be multiplat again. I want all of the Mortal Kombats to be backwards compatible. I want Dead or Alive to also be backwards compatible. Microsoft should make a Killer Instinct for Series X and they should also attempt a Smash Brothers clone. Xbox should also contract SNK or capcom to do a Xbox vs Bethesda 2D fighter. And finally please make Soul Calibur 4 back compatible!
I know unpopular opinion but I think Dead or Alive has always been the most fun fighting game. DOA2 back on the Dreamcast was awesome. I also think it looks better than most of the other fighters and is very newcomer friendly. Sadly the last two entries we’re plagued buy microtransactions and expensive costumes (back in the day you could unlock these by playing, imagine!), but I think that’s a trend all fighting games suffer from.
I played many Tekkens (all except 4-5), SFIV, Virtua Fighter 5, DBZ Fighterz (which is my favourite from last gen, but it had very bad netcode like every japanese game), Killer Instinct (a bit, not really super into) and MKX. Also the Naruto Shippuden Storm games, which are a strange hybrid and others now I don’t recall.
As OP was saying, this niche on Xbox is very limited thanks to MS strategical mistakes in the past (like abandoning Japan support for good for a long time, so no medium to small fighting games from there) and Sony aggressiveness (SFV, EVO, historic marketing of Tekken, etc…).
I am no KI big fan, but if they will let it rot, even considering all the aforementioned things, well, they will be ultimately the makers of their own demise in the genre, even if Sony will moneyhat things from Japan, they should counteract.
Don’t care much for any of the tradicional fighting games, they are not my genre at all. Only fighting games I’ve played semi-serious were Arms and Smash.