The future of the Soulcalibur series could be in jeopardy if the next title in the series doesn’t sell well. In an interview at Gamescom, SoulCalibur VI’s producer, Motohiro Okubo, says that getting to make the game in the first place was a struggle, but if it underperforms in terms of sales, the series as a whole could suffer as a result.

The previous iteration in the series, SoulCalibur V, released in 2012, received decent critical reception, but sold significantly less than its predecessor. SoulCalibur IV topped 2.3 million copies sold in eight months, while SoulCalibur V only made it to 1.38 million in the same amount of time.

In part, those low sales are what led the series to take such a long break. In an interview with DualShockers (via a translator), Okubo said that “the first thing is that the IP itself of the SoulCalibur had low expectations from the company.” Whether this means developer Project Soul had minimal expectations, or Okubo is referring to publisher Bandai Namco isn’t 100% clear, but I assume he means the latter.