Since Tekken 1 dropped back in 1994 major franchise releases were spaced out by no more than two to four years. That trend ended with the gap between the two most recent entries as there was almost a full decade between the releases of 2015’s Tekken 7 and 2024’s Tekken 8.
This massive deviation from the pattern was addressed directly by Director Katsuhiro Harada in a recent interview with Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, and the reason probably isn’t the first one that comes to mind.
“Tekken 7, or rather, fighting games in general typically sell for six months to a year. Best case scenario, they’ll sell for two years before people stop buying them.” starts Harada. “Initially, our plan was to stop supporting Tekken 7 in 2019.”
This intended approach would have likely still seen a bigger gap between releases, but surely not as wide as the nine years we ended up with. Of course, reactions to Covid-19 turned the world on its head for a good while after the early months of 2020, so delays and set backs from that period were understandable.
Harada doesn’t even bring up the pandemic, however, as though it surely slowed Bandai Namco down for a season, it apparently wasn’t enough so to reference in this conversation.
The actual answer, as it turns out, is an extremely positive one. We won’t spoil it here as you can hear it from the man himself starting at the 37:18 mark in the full video below: