Tekken 8, the highly anticipated fighting game from Bandai Namco is all set to be released on the 26th of January next year. While fans are impatiently waiting to experience the game, it has now been revealed that the game was originally scheduled for a release this year. The reason for the delay was linked to an avoidance of conflict with another title that was released earlier this year.
Director Katsuhiro Harada sat down for an interview recently and spoke about Tekken 8 at length, including a long-awaited mini-game mode that will see a return in the upcoming title. Tekken 8 will be the eighth game in the series, the previous title was released back in 2015. The game is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S consoles, and PC.
Tekken 8 Was Delayed By Almost Half a Year To Avoid Conflict With Street Fighter 6
Street Fighter 6 is said to be the reason behind Tekken 8‘s delay, as Bandai Namco decided against releasing the flagship fighter game on the same day as another fighter game by its rival, CAPCOM. Director Katsuhiro Harada has been sitting down for a chat recently in a series of casual videos titled “Harada’s Bar” where he answers questions and discusses games under development.
Harada spoke about the challenges of developing the long-awaited title that will finally get released by January next year. It’s worth noting that Mortal Kombat 1 also got released last month, but wasn’t mentioned by Harada as being one of the reasons for the delay. Without mentioning Street Fighter 6 by name, Harada mentioned “that title” occupied the June-July timeline for a global release.
Harada started by stating he wouldn’t name the title but revealed that he came to know of the rival game’s release date almost 2 years back, 1 year and 10 months to be precise. After pondering about what could be done, Harada mentioned it was decided to delay Tekken 8 by almost half a year.
Harada did not mention the originally planned release date for Tekken 8 but revealed that it was planned for the “same month”. Street Fighter 6 was released on the 2nd of June this year,
Harada Spoke To CAPCOM Directly And Exchanged Planned Released Dates
Upon questioning about how Harada got to know about the potential release schedule for Street Fighter 6 almost 2 years in advance, Harada revealed how he felt that if the release dates are closer to each other, “neither of us benefits from it”. Harada revealed he had an intuition and hence decided to inform and exchange release dates with CAPCOM.
When he realized the dates were far too close, Harada said he pondered over it for a couple of weeks before he decided to delay Tekken 8 and inform the Director and CEO about the delay. Harada also mentioned that no amount of marketing will benefit either title if they get released closer to each other, and hence felt delaying Tekken 8 was the best decision.
Harada also revealed the only good to have come from the delay was that the studio had a lot of work left with Tekken 8 and hence, the delay helped finish work on the game, which wouldn’t have been mentioned otherwise.
Mortal Kombat 1 had a great opening with the game only getting negative reviews for the downgraded version on Nintendo Switch. Street Fighter 6 also got off to a great start with the game getting a Metascore of 92 and a user score of 7.
With Tekken 8 scheduled for a January release, the game is expected to be another successful game in the fighter game genre. Tekken 8 got the announcement trailer revealed at the State of Play event back in September last year, so it’s already been more than a year of wait for the fans and hopefully, another few months shouldn’t be too long a wait for fans to get their hands on the title.
Have you played Street Fighter 6 or are you holding out to play Tekken 8 instead, let us know your thoughts!
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