Arc System Works Founder Minoru Kidooka Talks Guilty Gear’s Big Addition

While the entire battle sport industry gathered to support the Creation Championship Series, more commonly known as Evo, in Las Vegas in August, one programmer was particularly notable and famous at this year’s event: Arc System Works. At the main level of the tournament, the Japanese video game theater had three sports represented.

Minoru Kidooka, the founder of Arc System Works, discusses Guilty Gear’s Great Addition for Den of Geek.

While the entire battle sport industry gathered to celebrate the Evolution Championship Series, more commonly known as Evo, in Las Vegas in August, one programmer, Arc System Works, was particularly notable and famous at this year’s event. Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, and Under Night In-Birth II [Sys: Celes], three games from the Japanese video game studio’s primary level competitions, as well as two more titles as part of the game’s prolonged portfolio, Guilty Gear Xrd REV2 and BlazBlue: Central Fiction. At Evo’s star competitions this time, there are more games from one studio represented than any other workshop.

Arc System Works ‘ presence on the showfloor, which persistently had the largest line for interested spectators, was felt besides the main stage and extended events at Evo 2025, which included an earlier first preview of the upcoming Marvel Tkon: Fighting Souls. Additionally, the company disclosed at Evo 2025 that Guilty Gear Strive, which is already the franchise’s top-selling title by a sizable margin, had a 3.5 million worldwide user base as a testament to its ongoing popularity. Arc System Works, the company’s founder, president, and CEO Minoru Kidooka, sat down with Den of Geek at the event for an interview and simply put, absolutely rocked Evo 2025.

” We’ve worked with a lot of different companies and IPs before at Arc System Works.” Sengoku Basara and Fist of the North Star were the two films released in the early 2000s. According to Kidooka-san, his company’s partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment and Marvel Games for the development of Marvel Tkon: Fighting Souls is” we have Dragon Ball FighterZ and Granblue Fantasy Versus.” We still enjoy working with different IPs, even though our main titles are Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, [the latter of which is currently taking a break] We think that’s a continuation of our long-term efforts to spread our brand and reach internationally.

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Guilty Gear Strive‘s fourth season of DLC for the franchise features the first ever outside guest character Lucy Kushinada as a new playable fighter, with this sentiment continuing into the partnership. Lucy will be a part of Guilty Gear on August 21 after being released from the acclaimed Netflix animated series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which is also based on the CD Projekt Red video game Cyberpunk 2077. The surprise inclusion of Lucy in Guilty Gear Strive fulfills a long-standing internal desire to introduce crossover characters to the popular fighting game series.

” It’s actually something we’ve wanted to do ever since Guilty Gear Strive first came out,” said the director. Due to the large scale of Guilty Gear and the long history of its characters, Kidooka-san explains, it was a little challenging. There are many characters who are still unreleased that people actually want, but we also need to add more characters. We want to accomplish all of those goals. We actually wanted to do this much earlier, and we wish we could have, but we are now in Season 4. If there is another opportunity to add other collab characters, we will undoubtedly look forward to doing that in the future.”

Arc System Works has been expanding its collection beyond the slew of fighting games, including the adventure game Dear Me, I Was, one of the first third-party titles to appear on the Nintendo Switch 2, which was published in 2007. Arc System Works resurrected many of the company’s most notable properties as part of a fruitful partnership with Techn’s Japan, including renowned beat’em ups River City Ransom and Double Dragon. With the release of Double Dragon Revive in October, Arc System Works intends to expand into the action game industry with this acquisition.

” We want to put as much effort into these fighting games as we do these action games, and not just with the legacy titles,” he said.” We want to introduce new IPs as well as you might have seen at the June showcase. We want to establish a dual-axis format where both fighting games and action games are being played on the same screen.

I’m a self-proclaimed “mega-fan” of everything Dragon Ball, including the popular 2018 fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ, which was developed by Arc System Works and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, a long-standing Dragon Ball license holder. The Dragon Ball franchise’s involvement with Arc System Works dates back to Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors in 2004. In light of this, I asked Kidooka-san to respond to the interview if he would be interested in any other Arc System Works-developed Dragon Ball game in any capacity following the success of FighterZ.

There are numerous businesses out there that are managing the Dragon Ball IP and creating games. Finding a space for ASW that isn’t just a fighting game is really difficult, Kidooka-san admits. We said earlier that our goal is to expand our brand recognition around the world through action games and less niche genres, but if Bandai talked to Arc, it would likely be about fighting games. However, as we previously mentioned, we hope that one day they’ll ask us to develop an action game or a non-fighting Dragon Ball game. That would be fantastic”!

Marvel Tkon: Fighting Souls, which was created by Arc System Works and was released by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2026 for PlayStation 5 and PC.

PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC are the current PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 users. With a fifth season in development, Lucy Kushinada will be available for purchase either individually or as part of Season 4 on August 21.

On October 23, Double Dragon Revive will be available for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.

Minoru Kidooka, the founder of Arc System Works, discusses Guilty Gear in his book, Big Addition.