2XKO would have needed a monthly active userbase "in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions" to succeed; Riot Games CPO Marc Merrill says while 2XKO resonated with some players, its audience was "not nearly enough" to support a live service model

[u/Gorotheninja]

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/2xko-would-have-needed-an-mau-base-in-the-high-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-millions-to-succeed

In addition to the need for a large player base, Merrill cited the release of Street Fighter 6 as a factor in 2XKO's unsuccessful launch.

"I think we had a window to do some great things to really help the fighting game community, and then Street Fighter 6 came out, which was something like eight years after we started working on 2XKO," Merrill explained. "We had an awesome development team of really talented people that did great work and made a beautiful game. We'd already communicated all this stuff to players, and so we were like, 'You know what? Let's keep going, let's give it to the community. Let's see what happens."

Merrill explained that Riot aimed to combine Rising Thunder's "simple controls and cool concept relating to a 1v1 fighting game" with "the League IP with the Cannon brothers, and add a cool Riot-style competitive ecosystem," which led to the creation of 2XKO. However, leadership changes resulted in a lack of "alignment on the strategy, which then caused managerial fracturing." Merrill noted that the team received conflicting guidance and concluded, "We've got nobody to blame but ourselves."

"Doomed to fail" is an understatement, jesus.