While you may not need support for the game. The games would not do as well as they do without it. They are predominantly an online multiplayer game. I am no the biggest Tekken fan, but I am a pretty big fan of Street Fighter, I have over 1000 hours on SF6. If it didnt have the good online multiplayer, and just had just had the offline and single player stuff, I would have something like 100 hours maybe and would have moved on to other games.

And that makes a big difference, to how much I am willing to buy into both characters and costumes, and also the next game.

Tekken 8 and SF6 still have good(for fighting games) single player stuff, but you are looking at a simple story and some arcade modes. SF6 has a bit more of a single player RPG almost for its single player, and I have managed to sink around 80 hours into that, they add more with each new character and I believe it is free.

And to go back to Tekken, Tekken 3 had 22 characters, While Tekken 7 had 36, which then increases to 51 if you add in the addition characters, Tekken 8 currently has ~40 with more being added. They are fine games, with all the content that you want(mostly) in the base game, but the biggest difference between Tekken 3 and Tekken 7 or 8 is it isnt being replaced in a couple years by a new full priced game, it is getting patches and support, additional mechanics and moves, new characters. And the online/competitive community can thrive.

Tekken 8 has Volley ball. Tekken 7 got Bowling but that was as a DLC.

I think that fighting games are in a much better place with the season passes(character DLC) than previously.

They are a much more long term game, with better balance patches and additions through mechanics to the game. Tekken 7 for example was supported for 7 years and you can jump in with just the base game. This also applies to other games like Street Fighter 5 and 6, Guilty Gear Strive and so on.

Where as if you go back to Street fighter 4 as an example, The support was limited and then they added more with a new game, Super Street Fighter 4, which then got replaced with Ultra Street Fighter 4, and you could not play someone who had Super if you only had Ultra which sucked for the online community.

I do think there is a lot of issues with where Fighting Games are going, but that is more an industry thing. Like battle passes, avatar clothes and other shit as micro transactions.

Shinobi: Art of vengeance. It is a 2D brawler with stages that end with a boss, but they have metroidvania elements to add value for replaying them. It is about 10 hours to go start to finish while doing a lot of the back tracking stuff. Simple story but incredible combat and good level design(only one level I thought was a bit meh), the art and animations are fantastic as well. Very much a new take on the old games, and has a demo to try as well.

I mean, not advertised as a demo but any beta you get access to as a preorder bonus and it is close to release, I consider more of a paid demo. Has become less common now though.

I would be incredibly surprised if they charge for the update. It makes no sense to do so, you just split the community. And they announced 2 new characters(at least), so V2 will come with a new season pass they will charge for.

I also presume the V2 is the release of the new ranked mode, which hopefully fixes the garbage tower and it’s floor mechanic(preferably just delete it and give us a ranked queue with elo please)