Bandai Namco has been very open with revealing information for Tekken 8 well ahead of the game’s release, This has mostly been through character gameplay trailers and a hands-on preview, but thanks to series producer Katsuhiro Harada doing an impromptu Q&A, we now know quite a bit more about other areas of Tekken’s latest entry.
Most of what Harada talked about was small, but the fighting game veteran did confirm that T8 will include crossplay and rollback netcode.
Harada is notorious for having heated back-and-forths with fans at times, sometimes on social media. His most popular saying is “Don’t ask me for shit,” and he implements that in plenty of ways, even when he does go out of his way to answer questions about Tekken or other Bandai games.
Related: Arslan Ash claims a third Evo title as Tekken 8 gets two new characters
That confrontational nature actually played a role in this Q&A as, according to the developer, Bandai has not made a large announcement about crossplay or rollback being included in the game. This was because it wouldn’t do much for the game’s initial marketing since players online would simply wave it away as being “normal in this day and age.” He went on to tell anyone who might have additional questions about things like that to “shut up and sit the hell down.”
While this might not be a huge deal for Bandai, it is great for fighting game fans because it means Tekken 8 will likely be another step forward for fighting games into a modernized era where players can reliably play each other online across all platforms. This is especially good since, in the past, Harada has flip-flopped with his thoughts on rollback and whether he thought Tekken 7’s online infrastructure counted.
On the crossplay front, Harada went into more detail about how Bandai has approached the idea—and even confirmed that they tried to make it work on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One console generation with T7.
“When the previous generation consoles were released, I had already proposed crossplay between the two platforms,” Harada said. “However, at that time, they were at odds with each other over their mutual interests (and P2P security issue) & repeatedly refused. Remember when they announced they were open to crossplay a few years ago? But in reality, they didn’t actively support third parties at the time, and the hurdles were actually quite high.”
When Harada mentions two parties being at odds, he is almost assuredly talking about Microsoft and Sony since crossplay was not a common thing to see for most games until after Fortnite and Epic Games pushed against that norm in mid-September 2017. In today’s market, Harada notes that there are still problems, but it is doable.
And, while most of his other responses were teasing fans or talking about owning a Death Note, Harada also mentioned some info about the base roster for Tekken 8.
While he didn’t go into specifics, the producer said that T8 could have a larger roster than “Capcom-san,” likely referencing Street Fighter 6’s currently confirmed 18 fighters that will be in the game at launch. While the revamped character models and entirely new assets make the process of character creation even harder, the team is looking to increase the number of playable fighters that will be there on day one at the moment.
Alpha tests for the game are currently being conducted with an early build of T8 that Bandai is bringing to various fighting game tournaments and gaming events—which started with Evo Japan earlier this month.
Related: Evo promises to improve Japan event after multiple players raise serious concerns
Bandai has not confirmed when the next big announcement for Tekken 8 will be shared, but with more big events coming up over the next several months, players can likely expect at least a few more character reveals to pop up soon.
Published: Apr 9, 2023 05:00 pm