I don't really need to get into why the Dead or Alive franchise has this certain stigma, right? I mean, there's a Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. And Ryu Hayabusa isn't exactly in it. Actually, I'm surprised that he can keep his composure in the first place with all his buxom, uh, friends. Perhaps chastity is his true ninjitsu form.
Anyway, Director Yohei Shimbori for Dead or Alive 5 revealed in an interview with Gamasutra that the fan feedback of the game's demo compelled them to lend more importance to the sexualized traditions of the franchise:
We were getting feedback from the overseas offices to tone down the sexuality—to tone down the sexiness of the game, and of the characters.We actually got a lot of feedback from people who were playing it, saying, 'We want bigger breasts. Make the characters more like that.' That was kind of surprising.
There's definitely still room for having sexualized aspects. If you have a solid fighting game system there, there's nothing wrong with having beautiful characters as a layer on top of that—that's another layer of entertainment that there's a need for. If there wasn't a need for it, people wouldn't have responded to the alpha demo like they did, and send us feedback.
In this manner, the Dead or Alive franchise is paying for its past success, though it's difficult to single out this series from all the other fighting franchises for having busty women. Even with Tomonobu Itagaki not at the helm of Team Ninja, the "sex sells" philosophy that brought the series so much appeal at the beginning of its life is preventing it from being mature in the best way possible, especially when Dead or Alive 5 is trying its best to become involved in e-Sports. To sell more copies and please its fan base, this issue will likely never go away for the franchise.
Thankfully, Dead or Alive 5 certainly tones down the jiggly breast feature from past installments, enough so that I think that people can more easily focus on the fighting gameplay during competitions. It's important if it's trying to be more serious that it turns down the joke factor, and ridiculous breasts is one of them.
