Tekken 8 was the big new fighting game of 2024 and managed to take home the prize for the genre at The Game Awards earlier this month, but there’s a lot more on the horizon for it too.
The lead developers over at Bandai Namco are now sharing some of their ambitions for Tekken 8 Season 2 heading into 2025.
Japanese publications Famitsu and 4Gamer are back again asking hundreds of game developers for New Year’s messages and updates on what they’re working on and looking forward to.
Like we did with Street Fighter 6’s Director and Producer’s 2025 messages, we’re back to translate some more about what Tekken Project Director Katsuhiro Harada, Tekken 8 Director Kohei Ikeda, and Bamco eSports lead Naoya Yasuda had to say about their fighting game’s upcoming year.
“Tekken 8 won Best Fighting Game at The Game Awards 2024 because of all of your votes, so thank you very much,” wrote Harada via 4Gamer. “We’ve already given out too much information about Tekken all over the place, so please go check those out.
“We’re planning to make some major updates and changes to the game, so please look forward to them.”
Yasuda provided some similar sentiments as well with the hopes to improve Tekken in the coming season.
“In the Spring, Tekken 8 will begin Season 2 after several updates, and the Tekken World Tour 2025 is set to start again as well to determine the world’s strongest player for the second year,” wrote Yasuda via 4Gamer.
“In order to ensure that players all around the world can enjoy a more fulfilling Tekken experience than Season 1, everyone on the team will chant the Tekken Project theme song “Every day is Monday” three times a day and work aggressively within the legality of the labor law standards. We hope you will keep a close eye on the development of Tekken 8 in its second year.”
And finally we have the Director’s statement to Famitsu.
“Tekken 8’s Season 1 development is coming to an end, and we are currently very busy making various preparations for Season 2,” said Ikeda. “We are planning a lot of things for this second year to provide new and exciting game experiences, so please look forward to them!”
This does back up what the Season 2 trailer teased following the Tekken World Tour 2024 Finals earlier this month.
There Bamco stated Tekken 8 was going to receive a major balance and system update in the Spring with the promise that every character is going to receive new moves and techniques with a few examples though that’s all we really know.
We’re seeing a number of players not exactly feel happy with the state the game is in now, but adding new moves and offensive options probably aren’t going to change that sentiment much when most of the problems people are complaining revolve around the lopsided offense and lack of neutral.
So hopefully the developers are looking to add more defensive and other properties to the experience that’s not rushing to get in the opponent’s face as fast as possible and combo them to the wall.
Since this isn’t coming until Spring, we’ll all probably be waiting at least a few months to know more about what to expect out of Tekken 8 Season 2, so things probably aren’t going to be changing much in the immediate future.
You can check out the full developer New Year’s messages to Famitsu and 4Gamer on their websites though they’re all of course in Japanese.