Soul Calibur III: no online mode

By Ellie Gibson Published 1 April, 2005

And no character cameos either, says producer Hiroaki Yotoriyama. Spoilsport.

Following Namco's recent announcement that Soul Calibur III will be a PS2 exclusive, producer Hiroaki Yotoriyama has now revealed that the game will not offer online play.

Speaking in an interview on the official Japanese SCIII site, partially translated by GameSpot, Yotoriyama-san explained the reasons behind the decision: "At the current time, the online infrastructure is extremely different between countries, and there [are] people [who] can't enjoy network gaming.

"We've decided to concentrate on improving the [game's offline content] and its characters so that people all over the world will be able to have fun."

However that offline content won't include any guest appearances from non-SC characters. Link, Heihachi and Spawn enjoyed cameos in the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox versions of SCII respectively, but Yotoriyama says it's not his style to "do the same thing twice", despite receiving various offers. Gex the Gecko's agent is said to be gutted.

Soul Calibur III is due for a European release by the end of the year, and will be on show at E3 in May.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Universal_Hamster #1 7 years ago

    Its like theyre trampling our hopes underfoot, one dream at a time.
    Seriously though, after witnessing DOA's terrible lag-fest online, this is not a big deal.

  • IronGiant #2 7 years ago

    Put it this way if developers thought online play was a huge incentive and actually made people buy their games over others then it would be included in a whole load more games.

  • Juriel #3 7 years ago

    No online mode is just good news to me. Means they'll focus on the actual game more, instead of releasing a...feature that I see as useless.

    Fighting games are best played with friends over, instead of against some dumb-named Internet person who'll quit when he's losing. Different, of course, if your friends are all Internet-friends, but can't have it all.

  • absolutezero #4 7 years ago

    Gex would be awesome. You knows it.

  • myrmican #5 7 years ago

    Well, *spang* me with the frying pan of not surprise. A finely polished 1 on 1 combat game doesn't work on a network because slight lag on the controls makes it into a shallow mockery of itself? Who could have expected that?

    That said, they'll have to prove that this version is worth the cash - I'm very happy with SCII on me cube with two wavebirds at the moment. I wonder what will be worth £30 and stringing controllers all over the lounge?

    Meh... they'll probably bring out ported versions 6 months afterwards anyway. Namco likes Nintendo and don't want to needlessly aggravate 'em. Their job now is to make me excited enough to want the PS2 version...

  • Tweakmonkey #6 7 years ago

    Personally I think it should be turn based ;-)

  • Sid-Nice #7 7 years ago

    I'm very surprised, especially with all the other PS2 on-line fighting games out there at the moment.

  • Hunam85 #8 7 years ago

    Im glad there's no guest characters, thought it was tacky and spoilt the feel of the game

  • daylen #9 7 years ago

    No online play? Pathetic in my opinion. Online is the future of gaming and that's the reason I plan on emigrating from South Africa to Canada within the next 18 months. If SCIII has no online play, I have no interest in it. Bring on Dead or Alive 4!!!

  • The-Bodybuilder #10 7 years ago

    >""At the current time, the online infrastructure is extremely different between countries, and there [are] people [who] can't enjoy network gaming."

    They are....they are called xbox owners. ;-)

  • Galvanizer #11 7 years ago

    No New Zelda version of Link then.....

    Sob :'-(

  • Hunam85 #12 7 years ago

    Moving countries for the sake of games, i dunno if id do that, well maybe, just need to learn japanese

  • daylen #13 7 years ago

    Games are the meaning of my life. They're the reason I bother to get up in the morning.

  • daylen #14 7 years ago

    So what am I supposed to do? Play against the AI over and over and over? That gets boring very quickly.

  • myrmican #15 7 years ago

    O_o

    You get the beers in, and have friends round for a session of beat-em-up glory where the loser is jeered at and the winner acclaimed by a shower of pretzels.

    Playing online on your own while wearing a secretary's headset is worthless in comparison, especially when your opponent says "gay n00b" and quits every time you pull off a really stunning move.

  • daylen #16 7 years ago

    What friends would that be? I don't touch alcohol.

  • myrmican #17 7 years ago

    Alcohol is optional, friends aren't. If you don't have any to start with, I'm not sure online is all that much of a substitute.

    You've never called anyone a 'gay n00b' online have you? ;-) ;-)

  • daylen #18 7 years ago

    If some shmo started yelling "gay noob", I'd just take the headphones off ;-)

  • Roamer #19 7 years ago

    If you don't have any friends, take a visit to the nearest senior centre. The people at those places are desperate for human attention and someone to tell stories to. I'm sure you could convince them to play Soul Calibur 3 with you. If you have an extreme deficiency in your social skills, simply invite your parents or siblings.

    "Who needs friends, when you have Xbox Live!" Should be Microsoft's new slogan for the next gen.

  • Celeborn #20 7 years ago

    Playing games versus humans is better than playing vs Humans.

    Playing with m8's is better than playing online, but playing online is still playing vs humans, so better than playing the cpu.

    "No online mode is just good news to me. Means they'll focus on the actual game more, instead of releasing a...feature that I see as useless. "

    I disagree; the one way that REALLY tests out a system to see if its balanced or not is with lots of humans playing at once. Take Pro Evo 4 for example. 1-3 seemed invincible and clearly the best football sim. Take it online though; and it becomes clear there are some clear deficiencies in tactics and AI. You playing vs m8's over the past series - any niggles or whatever don't really show up and the developers have no idea of your opinion. Now its online, there are thousands of games going on each day - the developers of the game can see whats working and whats not working.

    So perhaps for this version it may mean a seemingly more balanced game. But the sooner a version is got online, the sooner the masses can really stress the gameplay to the limit to find any underlying niggles that until now have gone un-noticed.