After leading back in May, the Dragon Ball FighterZ Evo entries have continued their dominance and finished as the most popular game at this year’s biggest fighting tournament. Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition and Tekken 7 round out the top three, respectively. Evo 2018 runs from August 3 to August in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The rest of the list, as tweeted out by Evo tournament producer and director Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar, goes as follows:
1) DragonBall FighterZ – 2530
2) Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition – 2421
3) Tekken 7 – 1504
4) Super Smash Bros. for Wii U – 1303
5) Super Smash Bros. Melee – 1302
6) BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle – 1148
7) Guilty Gear Xrd: Rev 2 – 621
8) Injustice 2 – 356
The standings that Cuellar tweeted in May were similar, although both Smash Bros. games were flipped and, as you might have already noticed, are now only separated by a single player. Street Fighter 5 is still in second place. It’s the game’s third Evo and the only year since that it hasn’t led the pack. Tekken 7, Smash Bros., and Guilty Gear have continued to do well and have a similar amount of players when compared to last year.
Injustice 2, however, has seen a precipitous drop in numbers. While NetherRealm Studios’ biennial cycle trains players to move on every two years, players have complained about a stale meta that is making the game is dry up a little faster than usual. Some of its most popular players are even leaving the game behind, further scattering the game’s playerbase as they move on or wait for NetherRealm’s next game.
This will be Dragon Ball FighterZ‘s first Evo since it released in January 2018. While it has slightly fewer entries than Street Fighter 5 in 2017, it’s impressive for a new game to dethrone one of fighting genre’s biggest titans in its inaugural showing. And there’s no question that the game has tournament appeal. FighterZ has shown up at other smaller competitions like Final Round and Combo Breaker, where it had an explosive Grand Finals between SonicFox and Go1.
