Namco’s Project Soul team has revealed that Soul Calibur 5 is about to be sunset from online stores.
In a recent tweet, the official Soul Calibur account shared this message:
“Valiant Warriors – Soul Calibur V is taking its final curtain call on the stage of history and will be sunset on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 19, 2023. The base game and all associated DLC will no longer be available for purchase. Thank you for your continued support.”
Soul Calibur 5 was originally released in 2012, on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Most fans will likely remember Soul Calibur 5 for its crazy crew of new characters. That includes Viola, who fights with a crystal ball, and twins Patroklos and Pyrrha, literally the children of the franchise’s most popular female character, Sophitia.
Let’s not mince words, Soul Calibur 5 is not a fondly remembered game. In fact, it would take six years from its release before Bandai Namco would try to revive the franchise again with 2018’s Soul Calibur 6.
The issues surrounding Soul Calibur 5 are not necessarily about its viability in the competitive community. While the FGC did give the franchise a chance, it was really at its strongest, not in the arcades, but at home, as a casual fighter with some burgeoning ambitions to crossover into the RPG sphere.
As tallied in this What Happened? Youtube documentary, a lot of the problem was that older fans did not like the timeskip in the storyline, which led to the removal of a few fan favorites. The new characters were not exactly endearing in turn.
However, a bigger issue came about in development itself. Tekken’s team, including Katsuhiro Harada, were usually on hand to help Project Soul make their games the best that they can be. At this time, the Tekken team was working on Tekken Tag Tournament 2.
To compound matters, the Project Soul team was forced to ship to an unreasonable ship date. They were assembled after a long hiatus and given about a year or two to make the game.
Fortunately, Namco did not reportedly resort to crunch. However, the pressure to release the game early led to a lot of cut content, meaning the story campaign was only two hours long, and the characters did not even get proper endings.
There is some fun to be had in Soul Calibur 5, as the only game you can play Viola, for example. However, if you want to rush and get this game on your seventh generation console now, you should know that Namco never fixed these issues with the game.
It does serve as a curio in the franchise, and fighting games in general. While it’s removal on online stores is also a small blow to video game preservation, there is no surprise as to why Namco isn’t interested in rereleasing or retaining this game on those stores.
