What you need to know
- Over the past few months, Capcom has announced a range of ports for classic game collections for modern systems.
- However, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles were exclusively skipped over for these games. Capcom launched them on PS4 and 5, Nintendo Switch, and Steam for Windows PCs.
- Now, Microsoft and Capcom have worked out a path forward, allowing for MARVEL vs. CAPCOM Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics and CAPCOM Fighting Collection 2 to join the Xbox party in 2025.
- The news is a welcome gesture, as Xbox continues to grapple with concerns that games are arbitrarily skipping the platform.
Yesterday we had news about a game skipping Xbox, and today we have news of several games that were previously skipping Xbox no longer skipping Xbox!
Rejoice, Xbox fighting game fans, as Microsoft and Capcom have worked out a path forward for MARVEL vs. CAPCOM Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics and CAPCOM Fighting Collection 2 to hit the upcoming Xbox games list.
Announced over the summer, Capcom revealed that many of its old school classics are being revived for modern systems. Both collections are being enhanced with a ton of upgrades, including art galleries, design documentation, quality-of-life features like one button special moves and instant character unlocks, and much more. The games will also feature rollback netcode (which is an anti-latency technique commonly used by modern fighting games), on top both ranked and casual competitive modes online.
We’re happy to announce that after technical discussions with our partners at Microsoft, MARVEL vs. CAPCOM Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics and Capcom Fighting Collection 2 will release on Xbox One! 🎉 Both Xbox versions arrive in 2025, so stay tuned for more information! pic.twitter.com/Omdfe6IgYHSeptember 3, 2024
Capcom Fighting Collection 2 incorporates eight classic fighting games, including:
- Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro
- Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001
- Capcom Fighting Evolution
- Street Fighter Alpha 3 UPPER
- Project Justice
- Power Stone
- Power Stone 2
- Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein.
The Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics package includes seven titles:
- X-Men Children of the Atom
- Marvel Super Heroes
- X-Men vs. Street Fighter
- Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter
- Marvel vs. Capcom Clash of Super Heroes
- Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes
- The Punisher
The news will hopefully be well-received by fighting game fans on Xbox, given that these collections were due to skip over Xbox consoles completely. It came as a particular slap in the face, given that some of these games were available on the original Xbox in the early 2000s, coupled with Microsoft’s previous efforts to support game preservation with its now-defunct Xbox backward compatibility program.
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Questions remain over third-party support for Xbox
Xbox fans and customers have been concerned about Microsoft’s commitment to the platform in recent months. While we are getting the Capcom classic fighting games, we’re still missing ports of classic Capcom titles hitting other platforms, including Megaman Battle Network Collection, Monster Hunter Stories, and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.
Microsoft revealed Indiana Jones and The Great Circle for PlayStation 5 at Gamescom as a “one more thing” hype-moment, undermining the game itself, Xbox Game Pass, and the entire Xbox platform in the process. Microsoft has also been telling the public “no console needed” as part of its marketing beats for Xbox Game Pass on Amazon Fire TV Stick, and aims to reduce Xbox’s count of exclusive titles with deeper support for PlayStation 5.
Just yesterday, we had some whiplash in the newsroom. We wrote up that the first Atelier JRPG game is coming to Xbox for the first time, and wrote up that long-absent zeitgeist-buster Genshin Impact is hitting Xbox just a couple of weeks ago. Later in the day, Enotria: The Last Song announced that its Xbox version is effectively cancelled, owing to a lack of communication from Microsoft. It follows Black Myth Wukong slipping through Xbox’s fingers, into a rumored exclusivity deal with PlayStation. Meanwhile, Square Enix has pledged deeper support for Xbox, thanks to the success of Final Fantasy 14.
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It’s a non-stop roller coaster right now for Xbox fans. Microsoft’s non-stop strategy changes, mixed messaging, and patchy third-party support are undermining the platform at large, and creating anxiety for the console’s long term future. Microsoft claims it is working on next-gen Xbox consoles that will sport “the greatest technological leap” for the platform. But when the messaging has been so inconsistent, it’s hard to take anything Microsoft says on faith right now.
In any case, hopefully Microsoft has learned some lessons from the situation with the Capcom fighting game collections, although increasingly, it seems things like this are just not a priority for Microsoft anymore.