Understandably, there’s been some pushback from the fighting game community regarding shops and in-game currency, especially since AAA games are now typically being priced at $69.99. This is creating this feeling that full-priced games are effectively being treated as free-to-play with regards to how microtransactions are being implemented.
During the latest Tekken Talk Live broadcast, the Tekken 8 developers addressed some of the concerns about the implementation of a shop feature in Tekken 8. According to the developers, Tekken 8’s shop is intended to maintain a fresh feeling for the game rather than to profit off of individual items.
“We hear that some people might have some kind of allergic reaction when they hear ‘shop,’ but it’s more trying to update the game and keep it fresh with new customization items,” said Yasuda Esports as translated by Michael Murray.
“As you’ve seen what we did with Tekken 7, we tried to refresh the game and provide a better experience overall, rather than just trying to make money off of these individual items,” continued Murray with his translation. “The thinking is the same for Tekken 8 in that we’re trying to make it a better game, and this is just one of the ways that we plan to do that. So please keep that in mind.”
It’s said that the Tekken Shop will have a mix of both paid items and free items. The Tekken Shop is scheduled to be implemented with the second update for the game that’s scheduled to drop sometime during late February and early March.
Tekken Coins will effectively function like Street Fighter 6’s Fighter Coins. Users will need to go into their platform’s store, buy the in-game coins using real money, and then use them in the game itself.
The presentation also indicated that new items will periodically be added to the Tekken Shop once or twice a month. Indeed, this is certainly a way to keep Tekken 8 fresh with its content.
Later on during broadcast, Katsuhiro Harada (as translated by Michael Murray) would go on to acknowledge the prices for AAA games and microtransactions. However, it’s noted that development costs have increased substantially from what they used to be.
“We would like to ask a favor of everyone that they update their thinking to the current environment of game development and how games are consumed, etc,” said Harada through Murray. “Games to create now are just so much more expensive than even Tekken 7 was, so it’s several times of that when we’re thinking about the current platform of games.”
“When we take some of these legacy costumes that a lot of people have been asking for, there is a certain group out there that say, ‘oh, you’re just taking it and copy/pasting it into the game.’ That’s not how it works,” continued the conversation. “You can’t just take those old assets from Tekken 4 and paste them into the current generation of hardware and make it look fine.”
Of course, it’s then pointed out that the profits made off of these microtransactions will be going to good use. Rather than just having extra money sitting in Bandai Namco’s bank accounts, these profits will go towards new features for Tekken 8.
“The point we’re really trying to make, though, is that it’s not like [the money] is going into the coffers of Bandai Namco,” said Murray on behalf of Harada’s statement. “We want to improve the game with these updates that we’re providing for free that Harada was talking about, and to be able to do that, we have a large development team that we have to pay for.”
“So, this is how we’re using these funds to try and make the game better, rather than just trying to make money for the sake of making money,” concluded Murray.