Here's my prediction for Sparking! ZERO: In order for you to have the same character roster as Sparking! METEOR (Budokai Tenkaichi 3) in Sparking! ZERO, you will need to spend the base game (assumed) $70 and get a handful of DLC. I'd bet the total is above $100, everything said and done. This is based on two things.
First up: The roster. While the roster for ZERO is at it's largest with (seemingly) 164 characters (including forms/transformations), METEOR had 161. By that point in the Sparking! series they were digging into Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball GT and the Dragon Ball Z movies to hit that number. With only an increase of 3 characters, and the trailer showing 6 new characters being split evenly by new Dragon Ball Super versions of Goku & Vegeta, characters that were in METEOR are getting dropped in ZERO. I'd imagine that most of that room in the roster comes out of those three categories I mentioned earlier.
Second: Xenoverse's DLC. In order to get all the character-relevant DLC in Xenoverse 2 at full price, you're having to pay an extra $100 at least. Going based on the price of Xenoverse 2 DLC packs, and estimating that Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball GT, and Z Movies will each be their own DLC packs since they don't seem to be part of the on-disc roster, I'd say that's about $90 worth of DLC, not including taxes and fees. I'd bet there's probably another something or other added in there, maybe Daima gets a character pack.
I think the call of monetization is too strong for them to not do this. Double the price to not even double the roster is the exact kinda nightmare scenario "New, 160+ character Sparking! game in 202X" brings to mind.
Every time they release a new trailer and it shows no Dragon Ball, Z Movie, or GT characters I'm even more convinced that my prediction of the DLC element is going to come true. At least 5 new Super characters in this new trailer, and I'd imagine Kale and Broly are getting more than just their SSJ forms, so that's... what, 2-4 other characters there?
Worst case scenario: $25 for Dragon Ball, $25 for GT, $25 for Z Movie. Hell, maybe if the game does well, bring it up to an even $100 with Daima characters.
So. The pre-orders. The showing of DLC.
I was right (sorta), looks like Daima is going to be DLC for this. Also, Super Hero is going to be DLC??? That feels bad. You're already pushing out Dragon Ball, GT, and Z Movie characters to make room for Super characters (an action I understand if I don't agree with) and you can't even fit the most recent movie's characters in there on-disc? Fuck off.
There's stuff to like here. The expansion of What-If style storytelling is a thing I've been saying DBZ games should be doing since forever. The fact that Xenoverse 2 isn't "what if we did the webcomic Dragon Ball Multiverse, but good" is a travesty, so it's nice that the idea is finally being embraced. Same with allowing players to make their own What-If scenarios, that's also very cool and we'll see how that looks in practice! I'm going to assume that it'll basically be a combination of making something like a Parallel Quest in Xenoverse 2 and the old WWE story makers.
But on the other hand... I simply don't think you can make a 150+ character PS2 game in 2024 without it being monetized so badly, especially when you look at Xenoverse 2's monetization. It feels like... a real distillation how bad the industry has gotten? Like, there's some new stuff here, but it's basically going to be the PS2 games, again, but with DLC. And that's before we get into my unpopular opinion that we already have two games that play like Sparking right now, both still getting paid DLC, in Xenoverse 2 and Kakarot so this feels even less necessary.
It's so... "meh". I'm a lifelong Dragon Ball fan, and I'll never stop being one. I started drawing by drawing Goku and Raditz and making my own saiyan characters, it's just part of who I am on a very deep level. And seeing this, a largely lifeless retread of something from the PS2 era of games, but with the awful pricing of modern DLC, really just feels bad in a way the good can't outweigh.