Eh, like some have said, who cares? If DOA fans like DOA for fighting, or hot chicks, or a combination of the both, let em. Is it really any worse for fans of DOA to say they want bigger boobs than it is for fans of Borderlands to say they want gorier deaths in Borderlands 2? I'd say definitely not, if anything, there's a big double standard in that; its more acceptable for fans to decry Borderlands creators because they expect more graphic maiming and mutilation, but if DOA fans like DOA for the sexuality, and say they wanted bigger boobs, that's the complaint deemed kinda silly and worthy of ridicule? I'm not saying either the fans in either of these examples are wrong, either, to be clear; fans of different games love those games for different reasons. And that's totally cool. But the sort of double standard of what's acceptable is really silly when you stop to think about it. If fans of a game like Borderlands or Fallout partially enjoy that game for the over-the-top blood-and-gore, let em. Its a game, its escapism, and it all in fun. But its no more or less outrageous, or any different, nor does it make the fans stupid, that somebody who likes DOA or Soul Calibur would enjoy it because of "big boobs," or just the sexual aspect in general.

I think when fans sent in their feedback, they meant "Don't try to fix what isn't broken" rather than "Lol, boobs!" At least, that's what I believe and I agree. DoA is my favorite fighting series and Virtua Fighter follows right behind it. They are both two game that do their own thing and they both do them well.

@Whoomp"As a fan I can say that no, I do not want bigger breasts. What I want is to be able to say that I like the series without having snide remarks about "boob physics" or whatnot thrown in my face."

I'm also waiting for this to happen. It would be rather nice. But until then, I'll just keep enjoying the games.

I'm actually offended by this. I've been playing DOA since the first one in the arcades, since I was 11 or so years old, and I have been asking - nay, begging - them to make the tits smaller and lose the bullshit bikini shit.

I love these games. For me there is no seris that is more fun to play. It's not just my main console-seller, I even by new TVs each time one comes out. This time around I've even upgraded my internet specifically in time for DOA5's release. But as much as I love the gameplay, and as much as I like the characters on their more legitimate merits, I can not stand the bullshit about needing gigantic tits to make the game 'beautiful', previously spewed by Itagaki and now spewed by everybody at Team Ninja and Tecmo Koei. It's offensive to me as a player, as someone who actually likes these games for the gameplay, to be told that no, what I want is bigger tits. Gigantic, utterly stupid tits that flail around on a different plain of existance to the rest of the character. That is what I am constantly told I have asked for by the developers and publishers, since I was a kid this is what I've been told not only should be but simply is my idea of beauty.

No, Team Ninja. DOA fans do not demand bigger breasts. The people that occasionally pick the game up in the second hand bargain bin and button mash for one week before getting bored and trading it in again, those are the people that are demanding bigger breasts. The people that don't buy the game at all but just sit on blogs and forums and GIS jerking it to screenshots and crudely-drawn hentai, they are demanding bigger breasts.
I've been part of the long-term, core, die-hard DOA fanbase since the first game. I'm on the hardcore forums, I play with the best players in the world, I talk to the people who actually play the game for the game. I know 'DOA fans', and they all, almost without exception, are not asking for bigger tits. I've lost count of how many times I've heard "man, I love playing these games, but I'm sick of having these dumb tits shoved in my face every time". I did think it was just me at first, but I'm glad to say as I've become more and more involved with the serious DOA fanbase over the many years, it's really not just me. It's clearly, clearly the majority.

Team Ninja, Tecmo Koei. I love your games. Dead Or Alive and the Warriors games are two of my favourite series ever and I play them all. With the exception of the DOA Xtreme games. Because that's shit. Don't insult this life-long fan - as well as many, many others - by telling me that I, as a fan of your games, "demand" something so utterly stupid, insulting and crass. I love breasts. I think they're fantastic. I'm all for pretty girls. But those are not one and the same, it's not why I buy your games and you should be fucking ashamed of yourselves that you have perpetuate your IPs' image as being lowest-common-denominator fluff.

Personally I think they should just go for broke and have a game featuring two enormous disembodied breasts fighting it out in an arena. Why the hell not?

DOA fans apparently equal the lowest common denominator? Not that surprising, really...

Well, hormone infested children have to play something; why not let them play DOA?

You truly are Icehearted.

The virginity part was a throwback to the DOA 5 review comments...

My favorite argument presented so far has been that the objectification of women is okay because of violence. It is a rock solid argument that none could refute.

Surely the presence of violence in video games in COMPLETELY analogous to the objectification of women. I mean, they ARE just sex objects, right?

This is why everyone respects the gamer scene so much; because we are clearly mature, well developed people who are NOT fundamentally broken when it comes to social decency.

Video games!

Hmm, got a bit sanctimonious at the end there.
Anyway, my stance is that if the fanservice doesn't adversely affect the gameplay (which seems to be the case with DOA), then I don't have a problem with it.

But perhaps, in the spirit of inclusivity, it might be a good idea to include the option of toning down the size of the breasts for people that prefer more modestly endowed women, kind of like how certain games include the option of toning down the violence for people that queasy at the sight of blood flying everywhere.

I do want bigger boobs, bit in my face, not so much in my video games.

Are you sure he asked the fans? Perhaps he reders to his undercarriage as "the fans".

Refers is what I meant.

Forget all that. Give them chubbier arms, instead. I could chew on a nice, chubby arm for a good 43 minutes, easily.

They should try making just one game where the breasts are normal human size, the characters are believably muscled (though not to "female bodybuilder" levels), and no jiggle physics at all, and just see how hard the sales get hit. Probably not much. But who knows; I must confess that I tend to think of fighting game fans as one of the youngest demographics in gaming, so maybe they really are all about the juggs. Still, if I had to guess I'd say it's only a small portion of the audience that really DEMANDS the overblown blouse-bunnies.

I've said it before, and I still believe it: sex appeal in games is enjoyable when it's there (and I'll admit that I enjoy the T&A), but you don't miss it at all when it's not. As long as you've actually got a good game on your hands, anyway.

I've never liked big breasts. Is there something wrong with me?

I find it somewhat ironic that one of the linked stories is that one about that Steam game.

Game about sex? Jimmy here decries its ban as double standards.

DoA fans want titties? Jimmy here decries them as creepy fucks.

Nice double standards there, sweetcheeks. You're either on one side of the fence or the other.

Personally I'm gonna let Japan do their thing. They make what they want without limits enforced by whiny soccer moms, and kudos to them for having the balls to defend it.

Jim, you said what I said in another post. I'm bothered that he uses "big breasts" and "beauty" interchangeably. I just read his defense as "horny 13 year old perverts want us to have bigger breasts (also nude codes)". It just seems strange to me that, you know, if you want to see big boobs, there's this thing called "Google".

I'm... surprised to hear this. Mostly because it sounds like from the article, that Team Ninja is only doing what it's fanbase wants it to. This being said, you shouldn't ever fucking do that, otherwise you'll end up trying to appease the unappeasable. Team Ninja should do what they want, although looking at Other M, I'm not sure they're entirely cut out for it.

DOA breasts vs Jim's breasts. Which physics are better.

When beating the shit out of virtual women, it's important to make sure the breast size and physics are acceptable to our enlightened society.

If the breasts were smaller it would screw up the hit-boxes and make the game unplayable.

Well this has been a fun comment thread to read through.

Jim, I've very sorry you are gay and not attracted to large breasts like the majority of males. But don't take it out on the game developers.

And the by the way, my wife has huge breasts and likes big breasted women in video games.

Well, if fans want it, it must be great, right? I mean, the line of fans demanding sixaxis boob control for Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 must have stretched all the way to Osaka, huh? People are often stupid, especially when it comes to boobs. Building female character design out of the necessity of whimsically moving tits is goddamn silly. They're in a fighting tournament. They should be wearing sports bras that would inhibit such inconvenient and distracting bouncing while they're trying to concentrate on punching people and destroying perfectly good subways. I get they want all the chicks to be pretty, but they don't need to all have floatation-device-class racks. Considering how much effort they've clearly put into dynamic boobs I'm stunned that they still haven't figured out a way to make them move, if not realistically, at least rationally. Maybe when they make a character design where she looks like she's dressed to kick ass and not model at a car show I'll take their artistic license a bit more seriously.

If companies would grow a brain and stop fortifying walls between themselves and their customers, they'd all implement mod support for their games. Then we wouldn't have people begging for bigger breasts, because they could just make the breasts bigger themselves. Customers would be happier and they'd sell more copies without having to make new content.

But then we'd have to deal with even more of those fuckwads who constantly whine about mods that they don't care about, just because they perceive those mods as somehow magically "ruining" "their" game.

Jim, you're wrong.
Boobs are great.

As somebody who has been to China, and made all kinds of experiences with all kinds of asian women, I'd say they all look and act more immature in comparison to western girls. I think it's because of the soy - it affects peoples hormones.

Oh well Jim, it doesn't hurt anybody, so not sure why you got your panties in such a wad. A lot of people like what happens in that game, I don't, but I also could care less. Its an equal opportunity world out there, if people have the time to bitch and moan about this, then they have the time to learn how to make games themselves and make it in their high pedestal form.

@Sonintega All of the female fighters , have two or three "real" costumes like that and the rest of the costumes are there for the sake of diversity. At least that's the way I've always seen it and the series as a whole really. Something there for the serious fighter, but something else there that other people can have if they want/care. Still there are more people like those who don't care either way, and those who point and make snide remarks.

The first thing I notice when playing the demo(and the game) was the boob shrinkage, it's like everybody dropped 2-3 cup sizes. The second thing was that all the character models overall had a lower polygon count and less detail, yet the backgrounds got more detailed and layered.
But yeah, I'm all for boob enlargement.

@SirNinjaFace
I missed something, didn't I?

Dag gummit!

If it was massive hairy fatman tits jim would be all over that shit.

@Samsneeze: sometimes a snide response is warranted, especially if said response is attached to an article of similar tone. Your judgement of my judgement is just as warranted as my judgement of the developer's blatant pandering to the sex-fixated psychologically-adolescent guys they've decided should be their core marketing demographic. If the street-clothes alternate outfits are ass-kicking appropriate, than well that's swell, but I'm not going to take these guys seriously if they truly believe that it's necessary to have objectification (bonus objectification if you preorder from GameStop!) as a tent-pole of their franchises. Team Ninja is silly. Maybe they enjoy being silly, and if so kudos to them. They have succeeded. Let 'em be shallow, I have no dispute with the game's right to exist. But you don't have to take them seriously because they aren't sexist some of the time, and you certainly don't have to defend their right to be tit-fixated creeps, but that level of interest in female anatomy usually lends itself to an altogether different type of game.

I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't the only thing they talk about.

Its hard to take them seriously as a "solid fighting game system" when all even their PR can talk about is "look at our teenage fighters move like they are plastic dolls of gravure idols"

@StrongStyleFiction
Yeah, like, bliss-out, some gamers are just too enlightened for me.
LOL You made my day!

"Creepy sex dolls brought to life through some arcane means, existing only to mildly amuse the very worst of humanity with their physics-defying glands and high-pitched whimpering" sounds like a rousing good concept for a survival horror game, Jim.

I personally think DoA has become an unfairly abused poster child for the whole "sexy vidya game ladies" complaint. Yes theirs too much of it in the industry, yes more often than not it is just sad and creepy but unlike many other examples I think the DoA games don't shy away from what they are. The developers may seem a bit self-deluded at times but I find it hard to believe most of the people at TN aren't aware of what their games are, and proudly do what they do because they know its what their fans want. I respect them for that at least.

not surprised, not at all.

Well I must also be infantile, because I like big breasts. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!

Agreed. Boobs are overrated, especially when they're about to pop.

i don't really dig huge boobs IRL, but i totally support team ninja in their quest to have the hugest and most insanely bouncy tits in the industry.

it was amusing 15 years ago, and it's still amusing now.

Well, not gonna lie. I'm a breast man. So I can't say I don't love a pair of huge boobs on my female characters.

They can keep the sexualized content and the large boobs if they want, so long as they put equal, or more focus on the actual gameplay, I'm completely fine with that.

I'm 28 years old, I'm not playing these games on a tv where mom could see. I have a wife and child, and the wife certainly doesn't give a damn. Nothing to hide here.

That said, I also love fighting games and buy most of them that come out. This month that included not only DoA5 but also Tekken Tag Tournament 2. TTT2 may not be as over sexualized as DoA, but it's female fighters have no shortage of huge tits either, to be fair.


However at the end of the day...DoA5 is actually a pretty damn good 3D fighting game. I've been enjoying the hell out of it in fact. And it does something I really, really miss from the old days...actually let's you unlock content by playing the game. Earning extra costumes and characters... I'm sure there will be DLC, and I'm fine with that, even like it at times, but at least I could still unlock some new outfits and things just by playing the game. It should be a small thing, but as anyone here knows, it's not anymore. And I for one really appreciate and miss it.

Call me crazy, but after 5 games in this series, and a couple of spin-off games, I think it's a bit too late to start complaining that "boobs" and "sex appeal" are part of the selling points in the games.

It should be obvious by now that this is what the people buying them want.

Well.. We do, don't we?

I mean, every time these games come out all we really talk about are the boobs and their phsyics. The fighting gets talked about for a little while, but the majority of the talk is boobs.

So of course they're going to see all that as us wanting even more of it.

Oh God...

This just speaks volumes about everything that is wrong with western, puritanical cultures. Violence is fine, even promoted (sports, guns, etc.) while sex is constantly viewed as some form of necessary evil. The ratings groups will okay violent games for children, but sex, never! It really makes me sick, and only goes to highlight all of the problems with the United States (and other like minded countries) EVERYONE has sex, and EVERYONE wants to! I just don't understand why we have to hide it, and be ashamed of it. It really all comes back to religious groups, and their desire to control the populace through manipulation and scare tactics. (i.e. you will go to hell if you have sex out of wedlock.) I find it hilarious that on network t.v. we can see people get riddled with bullets, but we could NEVER see a tit! Jim, you sir, are part of the problem! I understand that objectifying men and women is problematic--but making something sexually attractive, to me, at least, is not objectification.

@basketbeige
From reading the comments here today (and Jim), it feels like we have a "New Puritanical". It's no longer necessarily manipulation and scare tactics, but more shaming and name calling.
Just goes to show that it's not a question of whoever is right or wrong, but whoever is in charge, because that makes all the difference.

Sex sells, how do you think my mom kept us fed?

Ahah, just kidding, we didn't eat.

I'm not really attracted to the ladies, but really I think the female characters could look aesthetically better if they reduced the cup sizes and fixed the physics.
Sure they can have big-boobed girls, but not all of them, not the underages ones, or the really athletic ones.
Women with unreasonably large breasts are now the majority in gaming, we need to diversify more so they have umm... a bigger impact.

How come in video games it always seems like all the female characters have small boobs or big boobs? Why can't I have variety? DoA should make some characters with giant boobs, some with small boobs, and then a range of boob sizes in between.

You know, like women have in real life, but of course with the really fucking weird DOA boob physics.

@basketbeige: wha? Jim thinks it's crass to market a fighting game based on the weight of bouncing jubblies and suddenly that makes him a puritan who's preventing the modern world from embracing nudity all the time everywhere for no reason? Kay... Are you a nudist? Do you frequently sex it up in public? Or are you just sad that there aren't enough fortuitously random tits in your daily life? None of that is necessarily sarcasm; if you are a nudist and you do have frequent sex, with a bounty of random tits besides, then you have a pretty interesting life, but violence shouldn't be glamorized therefore sex should be a public spectacle isn't a clear train of thought.

Sexuality shouldn't be shameful, but it should contextually make sense for chicks and dudes to be running around in undergarments other than to fulfill the basic human desire to see something that's human shaped as naked as possible. And games in general are bad about having female characters are specifically developed to be sexy and completely lack any other defining human qualities, or having sex being an ill-timed or inappropriate reward for the action that just took place (in addition to just looking weird).

"ARES! I'll kill you for tricking me into recently murdering my wife and child! I'll rip your flaming head off and shove it up your... wait a sec... couple of naked chicks over here that serve no purpose other than sex, better spin my analog stick over there for a bit, never mind the dead wife grieving, she's not getting any deader as they say, well probably, Greek mythology is weird... OK! That was a great thirty seconds of inconsequential, presumably sexual frolicking! Back to the revenge!"

Creating female characters just to have them be sex objects and not legitimate representations of humanity is fucking crude, any way you slice it. For every Alyx Vance, Jade, or Faith we get hordes of disproportioned, haphazardly dressed sets of boobs with interchangeable heads stuck on top with as little personality as they have clothing. And that trend should be considered shameful and marginalized to the point where it is no longer a defining characteristic of the medium. Team Ninja advertises their scantily clad fighters as distinct feature of their game ostensibly about fighting. Why? They should just make a sex game and be done with it. The competition in that field sucks. They'd never have to worry about being as good as Street Fighter or Soul Caliber again and they can fulfill all of their sordid sex puppet dreams.

Considering how there's free porn practically seeping out of the walls these days I really don't think it's much of a concern that you'll be hard up for nudity whenever you feel like looking at it, so why ask for more vapid hyper-sexualized homunculi in your gaming? There should be more sex games, sure, just to get the diversity out there. Course they'd have to figure out a control scheme that only used half the controller, but it's doable and people'd buy it. But for everything else, if sex isn't a rational event in the course of the game (ARES!), if the nudity doesn't have a reason to be represented (LA Noire has the least sexy full frontal ever but it made sense contextually), or if all of the female characters of a given game are uniformly sexualized to the point where they're indistinguishable from each other and they're all provocative-ity, all the time (DOA), then it has no purpose to be and should be adapted to become a more justifiable representation of half the human race. That's not Puritan. It's not feminist. It's respectable.