Tekken 8’s recent DLC character, one of the first-ever characters in the series who just can’t die—Heihachi Mishima—was released last week for Year 1 Pass holders and yesterday for everyone else. To much surprise, the Genmaji Temple stage is not bundled with the new/old DLC fighter that was announced this year at Evo Las Vegas 2024. The stage costs an additional $4.55 for everyone. As swiftly as a Cucco gang retaliation attack on Link in Zelda, upset gamers vented their frustrations on Twitter in protest. Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro “Don’t Ask Me For Sh!t” Harada decided to calm the mob on the same platform regarding Tekken 8’s approach.
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).
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.
Thank you.
Fine Print Too Long, Many Didn’t Read
The fine print has dictated that there’s no guarantee for additional stages to be included, even for the Ultimate tier. The Side Side Resort Stage was considered a free update, even though it coincidentally appeared around the same time as Lidia’s arrival. Typically, new stages would appear with new characters in certain fighting games as an expectation. Microtransactions, especially in this genre, are a hot topic that seems to have repercussions. Harada also explained the need for this practice when the in-game Tekken 8 store, Tekkenshop, made its debut earlier in the year.
Harada has been more responsive to fans for quite some time and has proven time and again that someone is listening. Even if Project Tekken decides to retcon their statements on other subjects, such as character rosters, character ages, and anything else related to lore.
