This one was f2p, so it doesn’t matter how many copies it “sold”. It needed dedicated long term players that would shell out for hats.
The casual fighting games market does exist, but it’s going to be people that buy the fighting game for an IP they like (say, Dragon Ball Z) and play it for a couple months then put it on the shelf. Maybe they boot it back up (and pay $10 again) when the DLC adds Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta or whatever.
2XKO was never a game that could make money from casuals, because there was no reason for anyone except “fgc mechanics heads” to give a single shit about the game. And those fgc heads saw a 2v2 tag fighter with ten characters and responded with a resounding “lmao”. Doesn’t help that it’s a fighting game with kernel anticheat.
missingno@fedia.io 10 hours ago
Everything is relative. The FGC is 'small' relative to the likes of League or Valorant, and Riot seems to truly expect that every project should be as popular as those or else they'll pull the plug.