Quite popular to the point where it has it's own dedicated subculture that runs tournaments all around the world. This summer's EVO tournament in Vegas had about 8k attendees with 9 featured games (including the newest Mortal Kombat, MK11), along with many side tournaments for older or less popular games. The Twitch stream had a peak concurrent viewership of 250k as well.
Besides those dedicated enough to fly to tournaments and compete with the best, FGs still seem to be generally popular among the mainstream; SFV sold 6.6m copies, MK11 sold 12m, and GG Strive sold 1m. The 2010s were a total revival of the genre, which had a bit of a dead period in the early aughts.
Besides those dedicated enough to fly to tournaments and compete with the best, FGs still seem to be generally popular among the mainstream; SFV sold 6.6m copies, MK11 sold 12m, and GG Strive sold 1m. The 2010s were a total revival of the genre, which had a bit of a dead period in the early aughts.