During the grand finals of the NEC 18 tournament, Koei Tecmo announced that Team Ninja is moving on from supporting Dead or Alive 5: Last Round with DLC, and looking at the future, pretty much mirroring what was mentioned at Tokyo Game Show in September.
As it often happens when a message is even slightly cryptic, several websites just ran away with it, alleging that the whole Dead or Alive series is being put on hiatus, or worse abandoned. Dualshockers reached out to Koei Tecmo for a clarification, and below you can read the comment that they sent us.
“We want to thank the players and organisers around the world who have supported the DOA5LR Battle Royal tournaments as we turn the page on this chapter. We look forward to engaging with everyone again in the future.”
While the message remains quite cryptic, it appears to mean that the developers at Team Ninja simply wanted to thank players and organizers within the game’s competitive scene, while they’re turning the page on “this chapter,” and we shouldn’t read too much into it. The mention of “looking forward to engaging again in the future” with them definitely seems to imply that there is a future that the development team is looking forward to.
On a personal level, it was pretty clear to me that Producer Yosuke Hayashi and the rest of the team were simply talking about the end of support specifically for Dead or Alive 5: Last Round, and not for the whole series.
With 10 million downloads for the Core Fighters version of DOA5: LR and seven season passes under the game’s belt, I’d say it’s pretty safe to assume that the series isn’t going anywhere, and I would be very surprised if Team Ninja wasn’t already working on the sixth chapter.