While everyone else has to wait until Friday, Tekken 8 players who purchased the Year 1 Pass gained early access to the game’s newest and highly-anticipated DLC character on Tuesday: Heichachi Mishima. Early access is just one of the perks of purchasing the season of DLC in bundle form, but players are realizing that bundle seems to be lacking.
Heihachi has brought with him a new stage, Genmaji Temple, but even those with the Year 1 Pass must fork over an additional $4.99 to use it. Those wary of microtransaction mayhem have rapidly flocked to social media to express distaste, and so Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada has done the same with an apology/promise combo to quell the flames.
There are no written rules for fighting game season passes or DLC bundles, but players have begun to garner expectations as the likes of Tekken, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat do tend to follow patterns.
One such pattern sees items like new stages, costumes, and colors as sort of stocking stuffer extras that can be used to sweeten DLC bundle deals, or stand as standalone purchases for those who prefer piecemeal approaches.
You could argue Bandai isn’t beholden to this pattern, but they did already establish it directly in Tekken 8 with the previous DLC character release as Lidia Sobieska came with free access to the Sea Side Resort DLC stage.
In reading the fine print, additional stages are not promised at any level of Tekken 8 DLC bundle, including for those who purchase the $110 Ultimate Edition. Harada took to X to address the issue, below you’ll find his response.
I understand that the community has some questions about the release of this stage DLC.
As the person in charge of the TEKKEN franchise, I apologize.
It was made clear from the beginning that the Year One Pass (Season Pass) would not include stages, BUT even so, when the Lidia Sobieska DLC was released, the [Sea Side Resort Stage was a free update], and in this case, the [Even though the additional Story Mode, which should have had the highest development costs, is a Free Update].
BUT [the Genmaji stage was Sold Separately], and as a result, the release ended up being one that was NOT well understood or Accepted by everyone (at least the almost all community was expecting a pattern similar to that of Lidia).
[T]he release ended up being one that was NOT well understood or accepted by everyone (at least the almost all community was expecting a pattern similar to that of Lidia). There are various reasons for this, but I will talk about the background to this as an individual in order to increase transparency to some extent.
The Tekken project is divided into two companies: a game development studio and a publisher that is responsible for game sales (At the time of the development and release of TEKKEN 7, the development and publishing companies were not separate).
As some of you may know, I moved to the Development Studio side a few years ago, and have been focusing on maximizing the quality of the content/Tech/Graphics etc. The development side and publishing side each have their own roles, and there are differences in the way they think and the responsibilities, I who should be the one to act as a bridge between the two, have not been able to properly participate in the publishing (sales) decision-making process for.
As a result, I think that there were parts of the process that did not take the Tekken community’s opinion into account. I think I failed to create an organizational structure that would allow me to oversee things beyond my own position. One of my roles was to listen to the opinions of the Community and reflect them not only in the content but also in the out-game, but I was clearly becoming passive, worrying about the relationships between companies and not exercising my role.
From now on, I will review this structure and change it to one that values the community as it did in the past.
What are your thoughts on this practice apparently slipping through the cracks and Harada’s promise to better value the community? Is Bandai ultimately heading down the road of ever increasing microtransactions, or was this an anomalous blip in the approach?