Tekken 8 devs aren't sure they want to work on the game as long as Tekken 7

Time is a fickle beast. We only have so much of it to go around, so when you think about the fact that Tekken 7 has had a lifespan running from 2015 to now, that’s around 8 years dedicated to the game. Now we’re approaching Tekken 8, and with our recent preview, we got to ask franchise director Katsuhiro Harada and producer Michael Murray if the new game will have a similar lifespan. They said as long as players want it, but they want to make sure they have time to develop other games too.

This came up in our interview with Murray and Harada, posted on our Shacknews YouTube this week.

“It’s an interesting conversation,” Harada told us. “We started off with rough ideas of the DLC for [Tekken 7] Season 1, and that was about it. That’s how the market was, as well, at the time. But then as we were making the game, people were still playing it and they wanted more and more. Then, we were like, ‘uh, okay, I guess we’ll make a Season 2?’ We announced that and then we were like, ‘you still want to play the game?!’ Okay, [Season] 3, 4, and 5.”

Harada and Murray go on to explain that while they would love Tekken 8 to be as successful or more so than Tekken 7, they also have to consider how much time they have left to work actively in the industry.

“I’d planned to start on Tekken 8 earlier,” Harada continued. “When you think about the amount of time you have to work on a game until you retire… it’s finite. I would want to work on more games rather than one for a very long time. So it’s tough because you want the game to be loved by everyone for a long time, but at the same time, you want to make more games.”

Nonetheless, the Tekken 8 team is enthusiastic and excited about the game’s potential, thanks to the larger playerbase brought in by Tekken 7 and the new mechanics in Tekken 8. You can check out our impressions of those new mechanics in our Tekken 8 preview, as well as checking out the full interview we had with Murray and Harada-san. Stay tuned for more exciting news on Tekken 8 as it drops.