The recent beta for Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, though brief at just three days, was not without its challenges. On the very day of its launch, Sony’s PlayStation Network experienced significant outages, rendering services unavailable for much of the first day in various regions. This unfortunate timing cast a shadow over the playtest, particularly for PC players who encountered a host of performance issues, including severe stuttering and subpar optimization that marred the otherwise fluid and engaging combat experience, regardless of hardware specifications.
Among the players, there were those fortunate enough to enjoy a seamless experience. However, one user took to Reddit to express their frustration, labeling the port as “one of the worst PC ports” seen in recent times. Their sentiment echoed a common concern: “This shit is inexcusable. Not buying until this gets fixed but at this point, I have no idea how you can get this cleaned up in two weeks.”
Developer Response
In light of the feedback, Arc System Works acknowledged the gameplay and performance issues affecting the PC version. They assured players that their team was actively investigating the problems and working towards a solution. “We’ll share an update as soon as we have more information,” they stated, expressing gratitude for the community’s patience and understanding while apologizing for the impact on the gaming experience.
To assist players in the interim, the development team released a detailed six-point thread outlining community-suggested troubleshooting options. These included running the Shader Warm-Up tool, disabling Frame Generation, and turning off various screen-recording applications. Some players reported that these steps provided relief from the performance issues.
Speculation arose regarding the potential causes of the performance hiccups, with some suggesting that the multitude of anti-cheat and PlayStation services running in the background could be contributing factors. While these processes did not appear to consume excessive resources, they added layers of complexity to an already CPU-intensive game.
Despite the technical difficulties, the Marvel Tōkon beta achieved notable success on PC, reaching an impressive peak of 33,233 concurrent players on Steam. This figure surpassed the previous records set by the beta tests of Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, which had peaks of 32,787 and 15,035 concurrent players, respectively.
With the official release of Marvel Tōkon scheduled for Thursday, August 6, the developers face a tight deadline of just over a week to address the feedback and rectify the performance issues on PC. The timeline is undoubtedly narrow, leaving many players hopeful yet anxious about the improvements that may come before launch.
