Mito appears in Sword Art Online SAO Variant Showdown re-launch
Image courtesy of Bandai Namco

Sword Art Online: Variant Showdown Has Re-Launched

Bandai Namco has formally re-launched Sword Art Online: Variant Showdown. The mobile game has become available again after less than a week has passed since the company teased its return.

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The company originally launched Variant Showdown on November 22, 2022. However, it temporarily took down the game for a lengthy maintenance that started on September 28, 2023. It thus took one year and almost three months for the mobile game to resurface. As a side note, Bandai Namco listed December 17, 2024 as the mobile game’s new release date on the press release. It remains to be seen which release date the company will use to stage upcoming anniversary events.

Bandai Namco is also holding numerous campaigns to mark the re-launch of Variant Showdown, most of which reward free gacha tickets. One of them is a campaign to thank players who still retain their accounts by either retaining the game app or registering a carryover link. The company has also launched a new gacha banner that features Mito, one of the two new playable characters teased in the earlier re-release announcement, with Agil also set to follow suit later on. Mito’s gacha banner will run until January 6, 2025.

Sword Art Online: Variant Showdown is now available again on Android and iOS mobile devices worldwide.


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Image of Kite Stenbuck
Kite Stenbuck
Japanese News Translator
Kite is a Japanese translator and avid gamer from Indonesia, Southeast Asia who learned the language mostly by playing Japanese games from the PS1 era. He primarily translates news about Japanese games and anime straight from Japan. After initially starting with a focus on Dynasty Warriors communities from the mid-2000s, he eventually joined Siliconera in 2020. Other than Dynasty Warriors, Kite is also a big fan of Ace Combat and other games featuring mechs, especially Gundam.