Even after a year since it came out, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is faring really well both in terms of player engagements as well as commercial revenue. The 3D Arena brawler has just won the Grand Award at the 2025 PlayStation Japan/Asia Partner Awards, as the game is currently one of the top five best-selling titles developed in Asia for the Sony platform, which is extremely impressive in more ways than one.
And during the award ceremony that took place on December 3, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s producer Jun Furutani confirmed that the game is still performing exceptionally well, stating: “even now, a year after release, over one million people play the game every month.”
Furutani has also shed important insights on Sparking Zero’s immense and enduring popularity as he believes the developers have successfully managed to strike a balance between a solid fighting game and capturing the sheer power fantasy of the signature Dragon Ball experience:
“I think it ultimately comes down to how thoroughly players can experience battles that feel authentically Dragon Ball. For example, if Vegeta fires a Galick Gun, instead of needing to dodge like you would in a typical fighting game, you can counter it with a Kamehameha. I get the sense that many players enjoy this kind of Dragon Ball-style way of fighting. I think one of the reasons for its popularity is the legitimate evolution of adding actions that pursue a Dragon Ball-like feel without changing the core battle system.”
His words are absolutely true as Sparking Zero has indeed managed to capture the unique Dragon Ball flavor of fights that we all loved to watch in the anime in a way that’s highly replayable and satisfying, and this is exactly what has enabled the beat-em-up to gain and sustain it’s sky high re-playability.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero came out on 7th October 2024 for Playstation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC and was released on both the Nintendo Switch and the Switch 2 on November 14 this year. The game received mostly positive reviews from the critics and quickly became a huge commercial success with well over five million units sold worldwide. Boasting the biggest roster for any Dragon Ball game ever made, Sparking Zero also has another DLC in the pipeline which will be released in January next year.
