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(Image: BANDAI NAMCO)

Bandai Namco’s Dragon Ball series is one of the most popular anime franchises in the world. There have been myriad games made leveraging the universe, from RPGs to fighting games.

The series is a massive success in its homeland of Japan and abroad, and with the newest mobile title Dragon Ball Legends, it looks like Bandai Namco could finally be ready to dominate the mobile market with the game, too.

Whilst the gameplay itself doesn’t seem like anything particularly new (there are fighting game card battlers in the market already - even Bandai Namco itself has a Tekken game on iOS and Android), it’s the tech powering the game that’s worthy of note.

Dragon Ball Legends is the first game to leverage the power of Google’s Cloud platform. This new platform is the result of Google spending over 30,000,000,000 (30 billion!) dollars on a worldwide infrastructure that allows everyone to immediately connect and interact, with minimal disruption to gameplay.

For a fighting game - or a card-based fighting game, at any rate - this could be game-changing.

Miles Ward, director of Solutions for Google Cloud, told Daily Star Online that this technology could fundamentally change the way online systems in games work.

“What we’re making here is a world first,” he explained. “The Google Cloud platform, to break it down, equates to five times the size of the internet and allows for international communication in real-time, with no interruption.

“Because Google can manage the whole database end-to-end, it makes it really easy for us to push out updates live, and it makes it easy for players to [connect] with minimal hassle.”

That means that should Bandai Namco want to address a balance issue in the game, or if the company wants to patch new content in, it can do it all live, in real-time.

Google suggests these ‘liveops’ will change the way game development operates, and will alter the relationships developers and publishers have with their audiences - all for the better.

“By using [the Cloud platform] to help roll out updates, it means Bandai Namco can ensure the game isn’t just exciting the first time you play it, but can continue to appeal to players post-launch thanks to how rapidly developers can roll out updates, without any downtime.”

For a game that intends to have as much broad appeal as Dragon Ball Legends, that’s an exciting prospect. With a design that focuses on drawing in players that perhaps aren’t used to fighting games, Legends could even end up penetrating the casual gaming market.

The game is built around using cards that appear at the bottom of the screen to form combos, with the right combos resulting in special moves being triggered that do massive damage to opposing real-world players.

The game has been intentionally built to be played with one hand, with one finger. The card-based battle system has been designed to be approachable to people that otherwise aren’t into fighters. You don’t need to know frame data, or be able to read attacks - you just need to swipe to dodge, tap to attack.

Launching with at least Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, Pan, Nappa and Piccolo in the roster, there are enough familiar faces in there for anyone with even a passing interest in Dragon Ball to feel at home with.

Dragon Ball Legends will launch this summer, with a beta going live beforehand (for which the pre-registration is now live).

Bandai Namco has also announced that you’ll also be able to compete in tournaments for the game in cities around the world at launch - a great way of forming a community for the game close to launch (it worked a treat for Pokemon GO, after all).

Dragon Ball Legends as a game is interesting, loud, bombastic, and very much belongs in the Dragon Ball universe. The title itself isn’t going to change the world, but the tech powering it might.

We’re keen to test the game out properly when it launches to see if the comments Google is making about its cloud platform live up to expectations. Because it could change how mobile gaming works forever.