Koei Tecmo’s Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation (DOAXVV) celebrated its 8th anniversary on November 15, commemorated by a large in-game update and celebratory livestream by the devs and cast on the 17th. Series producer Yasunori Sakuda also gave an interview for 4Gamer, where he talked about his vision for the game’s future direction as it enters its ninth year of service and approaches the big ten-year mark.
Along with a new Beach Party photo spot, tropical-themed swimsuits and new lighting presets, DOAXVV’s 8th anniversary update includes a new comprehensive skip function for Festivals, letting players skip through auto-playable S-rank Festivals they’ve already cleared. These kinds of quality-of-life improvements will continue being the dev team’s focus going forward, according to Sakuda.
“One of our major goals is to make the game’s environment more comfortable for Owners. The new Skip All feature we implemented this time has been requested for a long time. Still, we were careful about not going too far in simplifying the gameplay, and the reason we delayed this feature was because we were prioritizing enhancing the photography system.”
Another point Sakuda brings up is “not being bound by past decisions” when it comes to improving the game. This is something he considers especially important given how much player lifestyles and broader trends have changed during DOAXVV’s long life cycle. Interestingly, the coming year will, according to Sakuda, be a year of preparation for DOAXVV’s big 10-year anniversary. “It’s a big milestone for us, so I want players to feel not only how fun the game is, but how far it’s come throughout the past decade.”
Some things won’t change, though. Reiterating on the series’ core values, Sakuda comments, “as we approach the 9th and 10th anniversaries, I want DOAXVV to continue being a title that makes people say (in a good way) ‘This game is still as crazy as ever,’ ‘They’ve added another wild swimsuit,’ “They’re doing something ridiculous again.” With the team adding skiwear-themed swimsuits to their tropical island game, this stance hardly comes as a surprise.
Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation is available on Steam. Other announcements made to commemorate the anniversary include a browser-based cloud version of Venus Vacation Prism: Dead or Alive Xtreme on TapFun (Japan Only), a new Honoka figure by QuesQ, and celebratory merch (Thanks, Joaquín).
Related: Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation leaps to Steam’s top 10 bestsellers in Japan
