The open beta for Sony and Arc System Works' Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls has been plagued by significant performance problems on PC, according to numerous player reports and initial testing. While PlayStation 5 players have generally experienced a smoother rollout, PC users on Steam are encountering substantial difficulties, primarily related to unexpectedly high CPU utilization.
Reports across platforms like X and Reddit detail hundreds of complaints regarding the PC version's performance. A common thread points to the numerous Sony sub-services that launch concurrently with the game as a potential culprit for the demanding resource usage. This is particularly concerning given that Marvel Tōkon is scheduled for release in less than two weeks, on August 6.
Testing conducted on a PC equipped with a Ryzen 7 7700X CPU, an RTX 4080 graphics card, and 64GB of RAM indicated that the game struggled to maintain adequate performance even on medium graphics settings. During gameplay, CPU usage frequently exceeded 95 percent, and the game occasionally consumed up to 5,000MB of system memory. While six instances of the PlayStation PC SDK Runtime application also initiated at launch, their impact on system resources appeared minimal.
One observation suggested that performance might improve after the game has been running for approximately 30 minutes, with CPU utilization dropping to around 60 percent. This behavior has led to speculation that shader compilation on bootup could be a contributing factor. However, the recurrence of high resource demand with each launch, rather than solely on the initial startup, raises questions about this explanation.
Even after this initial period, online matches reportedly caused CPU usage to spike back up to 90 percent. This issue does not appear to be related to network connectivity or crossplay, as the online component of Marvel Tōkon directly stressed the CPU. Some players have theorized that this could be an anti-data mining measure, but if not, the development team faces a significant challenge in resolving these issues before the game's release.
The developers have acknowledged the problems, issuing a statement on X: "Tōkon Warriors, We’re aware of the gameplay and performance issues currently affecting the PC version of MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls. Our team is actively investigating these issues and working on a fix. We’ll share an update as soon as we have more information." For potential PC buyers, it may be advisable to await the game's official launch and subsequent Steam reviews before making a purchase.