Harada says the demand is low for more Tekken single player modes!

Harada is full of $#it


Here is the reality. A few million copies of Tekken 8 sold, but less than 20,000 players online worldwide.

The simplest explanation is most of the people who play the game enjoy it offline. They play versus mode with friends and family. And those who bought Tekken 8 that don't play with friends or family play what little single player modes Tekken 8 has.

Outside of Japan its the single player content and offline vs modes that made the Tekken brand. The popularity of Tekken outside of Japan owes a lot to Single Player and Versus Modes on Tekken 2 and 3 on the Playstation 1, and Tekken 3 and 4 on the Playstation 2 as well as the xbox versions and the Tekken 5 and 6 on Playstation 3.

The online competitive scene for the FGC give themselves way to much credit. The influencers, youtubers, twitchers etc are actually just a very loud minority. Social media signal boosts them but they don't represent the majority of people who enjoy fighting games They think its them that is keeping their favorite fighting game alive, but its not For example I know more than a few people who are still playing Tekken 3 and Tekken 4 casually and that has nothing to do with streamers. Likewise V4EVO and VF5 on the play station are alive and well. Both have a cult following if you know where to look .

The reality is serious competitive scene for Tekken accounts for less than 1% of Tekken sales.


Bamco and Harada made 2 Huge mistakes with the Tekken franchise

They dropped their own in-house game development engine and switched to UE4, UE5
They dropped survival mode, team battle, ghost battle, and a legitimate story mode from the Tekken series.

If the next Virtua Fighter has significant single player content it will be a success. If all it has is roll-back and e-sports modes it will fail just like Tekken 8 is failing.