Tekken 7 and now Tekken 8 have proven themselves as big successes for Bandai Namco, but they also followed up the biggest flop the franchise ever saw in its now 30-year history.
By fan and commercial reception, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 ended up being a pretty abject failure that once looked to have such potential to be a smash hit, but why is that?
Longtime Tekken Director / Producer Katsuhiro Harada recently discussed TTT2’s flop status on the most recent episode of Harada’s Bar alongside a funny little quip about getting invited to the Super Smash Bros. Creator’s house.
That’s on top of giving away some early Tekken development secrets and balancing perspectives.
“Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was a game that only players who found it fun kept playing,” said Harada. “This part probably can’t be aired, but it was like [edited out game name]. Tag 2 was highly rated. Even now, people tell me how much they love the game, especially good players.”
We wondered at first if the censored title was Street Fighter 5 since Rohto|Tokido was also a guest on the show, but that game didn’t even have an initial positive reception.
“It’s a great game for highly-skilled players, but for those who can’t play it well, before even considering whether a game is fun, they feel like it’s their fault that they can’t play well. So they stop playing.
“Usually, players feel they should be able to play well, but then they can’t and keep losing. They get frustrated and call it a crappy game. But because they are so close, they keep playing to get better. Once they get it, they find the game pretty fun again.
“For Tag 2, players who can’t play well feel like, ‘if a player at my level complains, I feel like people will just say that I haven’t played enough, so I just watch others play.
“As a result, only skilled players continued to play. It is the worst situation for games.
“As expected, Tekken 7 was able to get mixed reviews from the start. So I thought it would work out.”
It sounds as though Harada partially blames Tag 2’s initial positive reception because it got some more players at the door at the start, who were then smacked in the face by how unforgiving it could be to play.
Thus, the game ended up quickly garnering negative word of mouth or nothing at all, and TTT2 was pigeonholed as a fighting game only for the competitive scene, which is a relatively small part of the total fighting game audience.
That is of course just part of the picture as to why Tekken Tag 2 became the lowest-selling fighting game in the franchise despite fans asking for said sequel for years.
There’s the odd business move of releasing Tekken Hybrid the year before containing a remastered Tekken Tag Tournament and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue that may have satiated players’ appetite for that style of game.
Tag 2 came out in close proximity to Street Fighter X Tekken as well, which could have done the same thing or pushed players away from the next thing (being TTT2).
Players also lobbed complaints about the online play, balancing and DLC / update practices and messaging that left many confused or annoyed.
By the time we got TTT2 in the latter half of 2012, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were already aging consoles as well where the gaming audience was looking forward to the new hardware on the horizon.
The last we heard, Tekken Tag 2 only managed to sell around 1.5 million copies, which was a big step down from Tekken 6’s 3.5 million and Tekken 5 pushing around 10 million across all versions.
If Bandai Namco had stuck with the game by giving it next generation PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC versions (beyond just the Wii U) and provided more updates and content, they could have likely turned Tag 2 into a success story similar to Street Fighter 5.
But instead they dropped the game rather quickly and moved on to focus on Tekken 7, which admittedly worked out for Bamco in the end.
After around seven years, Tekken 7 managed to sell over 10 million copies, and though the total was right up there with 3 and 5, it still obviously took them a lot longer to reach that point.
We are a bit curious though about Harada’s piece regarding the reception of the games considering they don’t look all that different at face value.
Tekken Tag 2 had a MetaCritic score of 83 while Tekken 7 had a score of 82, so perhaps he was more so relating to Japanese / player reception.
Tekken 8 has a 90 out of 100 on MetaCritic and sold over 2 million copies in the first month after release though we’ve haven’t gotten an update on numbers since.
But it does sound like positive word of mouth and a slower but steady growth of community worked out well for Tekken 7 coming back after the previous flop.
As for the second subject, the group including comedians Kotetsu Hoshino and Tomoyuki Yano joke about how to escape lines of fans and what happens if you befriend them.
One of them laughs that a fan invited him over for a cooked dinner after a month, which got a retort out of Harada that even his close friends don’t do that.
He then goes on to reveal that it apparently took 15 years for Masahiro Sakurai to invite Harada over to his house for dinner.
The veteran game creators have been friends for decades with Sakurai appearing on Harada’s Bar in the past for a rare interview setting outside of the Smash circle.
Bandai Namco also helped Sakurai’s team co-develop the last two Smash Bros. entries as well including some from the Tekken Project.
It seems though that the Kirby Creator likes to stay mostly private in his life even around friends and coworkers.
You can check out the full episode of Harada’s Bar below for the full discussions and plenty of laughs.