Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls Season 1 reveal was disappointing enough to put the game’s future at risk

For the most part, Evo France 2026 seemed pretty fashionable. But there was a moment when the crowd went instantly and eerily silent.

During Marvel’s Top 8 Tokon: Fighting Souls, the developers revealed that the Jane Foster version of Thor, Venom, and Jubilee would be the next three fighters arriving as DLC in Season 1. After the trailer, the audience was asked who would lead Thor when it releases in 2027.

Complete. Silence.

Despite the clunkiness of Evo France 2026, it seems like these are good choices for Season 1. Many of you have had positive things to say about the characters, noting that it seems like the developers want to add unique variations of popular characters for more dynamic moves, similar to Phoenix Cyclops.

The problem isn’t really the programming. This is the size of programming.

Fighting games need faster release schedules to survive

It’s no secret that Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was the subject of a huge debate within the FGC. I’ve even speculated that Marvel Tokon might be the next game to bite the dust, although I’m not saying that’s my own desire.

One of the reasons for its surprisingly ill-fated launch was the small roster. It seems like fighting games continue to make this mistake time and time again and become incomplete. And the FGC is fed up. We were extremely disappointed with 2XKO for many reasons, including its small starting roster, which ultimately led to its quick demise.

Worse yet, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a 4v4 fighter. With four characters per team, this is clearly going to be a problem if you only have 20 playable characters. This gets old pretty quickly.

@TokonFighters Only 20 characters in a 4v4 game? 💀💀

— Black Dranzer (@yamiunderrated) February 9, 2026

But those who had faith in Marvel Tokon from the start continued to point the finger at the DLC. Every fighting game has DLC. I mean, they have to since they start incomplete.

However, it was quickly confirmed that the developers would only offer four fighters in Season 1. And Season 1 will likely last until the summer of 2027. That’s basically a year, and in that time we’ll only get four more characters.

It’s hard to be positive about this. The DLC route only works if, you know, you get DLC. The hype surrounding Super Smash Bros. DLC fighters Ultimate was because the roster was already massive at the start, then we got new DLC one after another. No one is keen on getting Jubilee until summer 2027.

We’ve seen it in action many times. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves had a lot of hype when it launched and had an incredible debut on the main stage at Evo Las Vegas 2025. But the game fell apart pretty quickly. And even the developers knew why.

I spoke with producer Shinya Tamaki earlier this year and he admitted that the lack of major content updates during the game’s launch year caused players to leave. They had no intention of releasing content so slowly and claimed they needed to prioritize other things. But this came at the cost of a loss of interest from the FGC.

Fatal Fury: City of Wolves couldn’t say the same for a while. And the developers admit that it’s partly their fault. For a while, the game did not receive many major content updates, leading to players leaving. Tamaki explained that it wasn’t the team’s intention to do this, but it took about a year to optimize the development pipeline.

“But now we have a schedule of updating one character per month. It’s a very, very fast pace. And with these characters, you release a stage, music, new gameplay, character balancing… We have a new update with new content, and we’ve seen people come back,” Tamaki said.

The fighting game scene is clearly fed up with new games releasing without a comprehensive slate. The only cure is for developers push after release to finish the game. Avatar Legends: The Fighting gave players what they wanted with its latest update and has since enjoyed massive support.

Meanwhile, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls released with a small roster and seems to be draining DLC ​​fighters at an extremely slow pace. If you want FGCs to feel like you don’t care about them, this is the way to do it.

Do I really think Season 1 having four characters is the reason Marvel Tokon might fail? No, but I think it plays a role. I think it won’t really keep the hype going without giving players something to get excited about.