This past weekend Irvine, California was host to the ArcRevo America 2019 finals, which saw competitors duking it out for big cash prizes in all of Arc System Work's biggest titles including Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2, Blazblue Central Fiction, Under Night In-BIrth EXE: Late[st], and Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, which will have 9 new DLC characters for the newest version releasing this Thursday. After the Grand Finals for Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2 ended, which saw Omito and his Johnny take home the $20,000 grand prize, the crowd was treated to a brand new trailer for the upcoming Guilty Gear title.
Previously, the game had just been referred to as "Guilty Gear" or "Guilty Gear 2020", but we finally got an official name for the game, "Guilty Gear Strive" with the 'IV' in Strive standing out to make the roman numeral for 4. The naming convention makes sense considering that this is the fourth mainline entry in the Guilty Gear series, and previous titles also had very weird and interesting ways to snake numbers in their titles. Guilty Gear XX had the 'XX' as a substitute for '2', and 'Xrd' is a play on saying it is the '3rd' game in the series. Arc System Works is known for its creative use of titles, with the Under Night series being the most egregious example.
The trailer features a compilation of previously announced characters, which as of this writing includes Sol Badguy, Ky Kiske, May, Axl Low, and Chip Zanuff and Potemkin who we just saw in a new Guilty Gear trailer a couple of weeks ago. The trailer also touches on the Roman Cancel mechanic for the first time in this new entry, which is now accompanied by a ticking clock icon. Since the first demo of the game was available at ArcRevo America, and many players have made their opinions heard - there was no need to hide some of the deeper mechanics in this new trailer.
Lastly, at the very end of the trailer, another "Here Comes Daredevil" prompt was followed by the first look at another returning legacy character, Faust. To really nail the point home, at the end of the trailer it was revealed that another trailer and demo would be available at Frosty Faustings XII in Wheeling, Illinois on January 17th and 18th, 2020 with the word "Faust" in the tournament's URL highlighted in red. A demo will also be available at EVO Japan 2020 the following week on January 24th through the 26th in Makuhari, Japan.
For the last few years, it has been increasingly common for new fighting games like the new version of Under Night In Birth, which was announced earlier this year at EVO 2019, to be announced and playable at the show as EVO becomes more of a fighting game focused E3 with each passing year.
The developers on stage also confirmed that the game will release 'late 2020' and it is still only listed as a PS4 exclusive game, at least for now.
Source: Arc System Works