Multiple Tekken Releases Aim to Expand Series Audience

The Tekken series and the fighting game genre in general have seen a great comeback in the last few years and, with five big titles in development at the moment, the leading developer of the series believes that there’s space for all of them on the market.

Katsuhiro Harada, who is chief producer working on the Tekken franchise, told Gamasutra that, “The reason for that is because, back in the day when we used to make the previous Tekkens, it was mainly focused on one platform, be it the arcade or PlayStation hardware. Plus the user base was much more narrow; it tended to be 20 year old males.”

He added, “But now we've noticed there's a broadening of the player base, where they're anywhere between 20 and 40 years of age, and you have various different hardware that are very viable platforms at the same time.”

The most recent Tekken release is Hybrid for the PlayStation 3 home console from Sony and Namco Bandai is at the moment working on: Tekken Tag Tournament 2 for the PS3 and the Xbox 360), Tekken 3D Prime Edition on the Nintendo 3DS, a Tekken game for the upcoming for Wii U and Tekken X Street Fighter, a collaboration with Capcom.

Harada says that one the main aims for his company is to give players a lot of options when it comes to the hardware on which they can play Tekken games, keeping them involved with the series both at home and on the move.

The developer says that Namco Bandai will continue to evolve the series with each new release, delivering more of a focus on visual content in order to keep up with older fans who are now more engaged with movies and stories.

Street Fighter x Tekken will be launched during the first three months of 2012.