Bringing Under Night 2 to the Arena: A Chat with Arc System Works CEO Minoru Kidooka

Founded in 1988, Arc System Works (or ArcSys for short) is the game developer/publisher behind many iconic anime fighting games such as BlazBlue, Dragonball FighterZ, and Guilty Gear—whose most recent entry recently surpassed 2.5 million players. And leading ArcSys since day one has been its founder, president, and CEO: Minoru Kidooka. Present at EVO 2023 to celebrate ArcSys' 35 anniversary and talk about the company's latest announcements, Kidooka also took the time to speak with ANN about ArcSys' latest batch of updates.

The following interview with the indispensable help of translator Yuji Moriya (who was cosplaying as Venom from Guilty Gear during the interview).

Anime News Network: Can you tell us about yourself?

Minoru KIDOOKA: Hi. My name is Kidooka from Arc System Works. Nice to meet you.

Recently Guilty Gear -Strive- surpassed 2.5 million players. Can you tell us more about that?

KIDOOKA: Guilty Gear -Strive- came out two years ago, and in that time, there were 2.5 million units sold. So, to think that there are 2.5 million players all over the world within two years, it's just amazing. And I'm so grateful for everybody's support in our game. And a lot has happened throughout these years, but we're excited to return in this post-COVID area. This is our second time coming out to EVO after the COVID shutdown. But I'm really excited to be with the community again, and we're having so much fun.

Do you plan on continuing to prioritize growth for Guilty Gear -Strive-?

KIDOOKA: Yeah, definitely. You know, there are 2.5 million players worldwide, but we intend to expand that player base even further. And we want to support the game in the long term and have our players play as long as possible. And so we are devoted to keep extending and growing the game.

Is there going to be similar prioritization for growth for the new UNI game [Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes]]?

KIDOOKA: Yes, with Under Night, you know, there was a bit of a hiatus that we experienced with the game, but now that it's coming out next year, we do plan to support the game long term. And just as we do with Guilty Gear, we want to grow the game as much as possible.

What inspired Arc System Works to return to UNI?

KIDOOKA: Ever since the release and success of Under Night—the first Under Night—we actually already had a plan in place to create a sequel. It's just that it took a little bit of time due to different circumstances; it took a little bit of time for us to execute that plan. But now, we are collaborating, working closely with French Bread to make it happen. And it's something that we wanted to do for a long time.

The demo for the new UNI was at EVO. What has it been like watching everybody play it?

KIDOOKA: We are aware that there's a huge U.S. fan base for Under Night. And so with our demo with Under Night 2, we're super grateful to see so many people come out and try the game. That said, we want to ensure that Under Night 2 returns next year as a competing title for EVO. To do that, we have to release it next year and make that comeback. So we will do our best to make that happen and return to EVO with UNI 2 next year.

Oh, that would be very exciting. So this year is also an anniversary year for Arc System Works; you have a new UNI game on the horizon and Guilty Gear season 3 in the works as well. What else do you see in the future for Arc System Works?

KIDOOKA: There's nothing specific that I can call out regarding titles. But as we said before, Guilty Gear and Under Night, we will continue to support long term so that we have longevity with the fans but also create new games and deliver new games. That is our life; that is our path. That is what we do as a company. So we want to continue developing new and existing IPs such as Double Dragon, River City Ransom—we also want to support those games. Games that are outside of the fighting game genre. So we want to continually challenge ourselves to create exciting new IPs for the fans. We want to keep doing that going forward.

Do you have any other closing thoughts? Anything else you'd like to say?

KIDOOKA: Here we are at EVO, and I'm seeing so many people show up to this event, and I'm just really inspired by the energy that everybody's bringing to this community and event. And in terms of Guilty Gear, we have so many participants—so many contestants entering Guilty Gear. So that's very, very exciting.

And with the support of outside companies like French Bed and Cygames, who develop Granblue, I think it is our mission to bring excitement to the fighting game community and bring that energy and hype up the crowd. We're excited to be here and hope everybody enjoys the event.