A popular fighting game from 2005 that was (and still is) exclusive to PS2 consoles is set to finally return with a new release in the coming months. Throughout its history, there have been a number of games in the fighting genre that have only ever appeared on PlayStation hardware. Street Fighter V, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Tekken 3, and even the upcoming Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls are just some of the many fighting games that have solely appeared on different PlayStation consoles. Now, one of these games from the PS2 era is soon set to get a new port, unshackling it at last from its original console.
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Announced by PlayStation recently, it was said that SoulCalibur 3 will soon get a new port on PS5 and PS4. Released in October of 2005, the third mainline entry in the SoulCalibur series only ever came to PS2. While a subsequent version of SoulCalibur 3 did end up hitting arcades in 2006, this PlayStation 2 version is still the only one to ever be available for consoles or PC. Little is currently known about when this SoulCalibur 3 port will hit PS5 and PS4, but PlayStation has confirmed that it will be arriving before the end of 2025. In addition, it will join the PlayStation Plus Classics catalog whenever it does become available.
This PS2 Exclusivity Is a Bit of an Oddity
SoulCalibur 3‘s exclusivity to PS2 has always been particularly interesting as it’s the only mainline game in the series that is locked to one platform. The original SoulCalibur was initially exclusive to the Sega Dreamcast, but it was ported to Xbox 360 a decade later. SoulCalibur 2, SoulCalibur 4, and SoulCalibur 5 were then all multiplatform titles that hit a variety of different consoles in the respective generations in which they released.
So why exactly was SoulCalibur 3 exclusive to PS2? Well, while we don’t know for sure, the likely answer is that Sony paid a lot of money to make it that way. There’s a good chance it made an agreement with publisher Namco that ensured SoulCalibur 3 wouldn’t be released elsewhere, and that has stayed true 20 years later. For this reason, it’s why PlayStation is now at liberty to bring SoulCalibur 3 back on PS5 and PS4, and in the process, make it widely accessible to an entire new generation for the first time.
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A Nintendo 64 console over a collage of game box art from the system's library. -
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