Rumors abound that Marvel Vs. Capcom 4 will be premiering at the PlayStation Experience (PSX) which had its schedule released a couple of days ago. Are there any chances of the next iteration of the much-beloved franchised being announced in a few days? It doesn't look likely. Let's examine what evidence we have.
These rumors have three component parts: unannounced panels at the event, comments from people in the fighting game community and elsewhere (including a certain post on NeoGAF), and an awful lot of hope. As it stands, there's practically no hard evidence to support the assertion that Marvel Vs. Capcom 4 will be premiering soon.
Earlier today, we reported that Street Fighter V will continue to be supported for the next few years. That report is sourced from a Famitsu interview which was translated by Event Hubs. In that translation, Street Fighter V Executive Producer Yoshinori Ono states that they're focusing on Capcom's lead fighting game for the moment. It's not a hard denial of Marvel vs. Capcom 4, but it isn't a confirmation, either.
Next is a tweet from Ryota Niitsuma from July 18, 2016:
https://twitter.com/Ryota_Niitsuma/status/755086256590065664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
A few months later, another tweet on the matter:
https://twitter.com/Ryota_Niitsuma/status/780698501885796352
Ryota Niitsuma was the Director and Producer of Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds according to IMDB. While he states that he is now working in another division at Capcom, it would be reasonable to assume that he is in a high enough position not to outright deny the existence of a game that was going to be shown only a couple of months later.
Next, we have these "leaked screenshots" (which I found in this Reddit post, but are also online elsewhere):
[gallery type="slideshow" size="full" ids="113610,113611"]
So far, that's one statement of (essentially) "Capcom isn't really doing any other fighting games right now" and one "nothing's happening in regards to Marvel Vs. Capcom 4" from two highly-placed employees in the company. That, some anonymous text posts throughout the Internet, and a couple of screenshots that show absolutely no gameplay that could simply be decent quality fakes.
As far as the evidence is concerned, we don't have a whole lot to go on. Video game companies (and, well, companies in general) are notoriously legally savvy. As best as I can tell, we have no domain names secured or registered trademarks. We have no announcement of a partnership between Capcom and Marvel for a new title, something that would be a necessity for such a title. If Capcom truly intends to debut Marvel Vs. Capcom 4 in at PSX 2016 they've left very little in the way of evidence - and in today's interconnected world that's practically a Herculean feat.
That's where it's time to apply Occam's Razor - do you think it's more likely that Capcom, Marvel, and all of the possibly involved companies have had an absolutely perfect development across hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people with absolutely nothing leaked (despite how much the fighting game community wants this game) or do you think it's more likely that Marvel vs. Capcom 4 isn't being debuted at PSX after all? Going by what I've seen so far, I'm sorry to say that the latter seems much more likely.
We've reached out to Capcom for comment on the matter.
Update: Capcom got back to us with the following comment:
Capcom does not comment on rumors or speculation.
Update 2: Polygon has corroborated the rumor in a new article on their site. In the post, they detail that it will be announced at the time that the other rumors state, and that the game will be focusing for Marvel characters on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Characters are more likely to come from franchises in the MCU like The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, while mutant characters would be expected to be left out according to what they have heard from multiple anonymous sources.
Finally, they state that they have heard there may be good news for fans of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 coming soon, potentially meaning an update or patch if Capcom has gotten the license to Marvel characters back.
We will update this story further if we are able to find out more.
Update 3: An article over at Shoryuken details how a series of images feeding into the hype (not depicted in our piece) have been outed as fakes by the author. We've also slightly updated the formatting of the updates to make them stand out individually a bit better. Here's the critical image in question from the post on NeoGAF:
Do you think that Marvel vs. Capcom 4 will debut at the PlayStation Experience despite the unclear nature of the rumor? Do you feel confident that Capcom could give the title its full attention? Let us know in the comments below!
