From literally out of nowhere, Namco Bandai earlier today announced Tekken Card Tournament. It's the first "cross media project" for the franchise, and will thustly be represented in two different formats.
First as a free-to-play online card battle game for smart phones, tablets, and web browsers, which will be available in the coming weeks. And second, in the form of physical cards, which will be available in stores later this year.
Tekken is published by Namco Bandai, but for the most part, it's a Namco thing; the franchise was established well before the two entities merged a number of years later.
This new venture basically represents the other half's first real chance to mess around with Tekken; in Japan, Bandai is a well established player in the physical card marketplace.
As the PR blast explains:
"The physical game booster packs available at retailers later this year can be played as a standalone card game, or added in players’ virtual game card deck by QR Code scanning. Scanning the game cards will give upgrades to online game characters or add a new character to the roster. In addition an Augmented Reality feature lets TEKKEN characters populate the real world simply by pointing a smartphone or tablet camera at the game cards."
As for the digital version, it too can be played all by itself. It joins the ranks of the previously released Tekken Bowling app, which is spun off from the mini game that originally appeared in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 for the PS2.
