When it comes to fighting game franchises, especially ones that have a long life, the urge to “reinvent yourself” is prominent after a few entries. At first, you merely want to establish the fighting game as something people would want to play. Then, you go and try to build off it to keep their interest. After that, every entry is a struggle to keep interest, and sometimes, you have to think “outside the box” to try and keep people coming back for more. In the case of Bandai Namco, it took its fighting game to a new direction with Tekken Tag Tournament.
The game focused on 2v2 battles, which you couldn’t do in the main series. It only had two entries, but Bandai Namco was confident enough in it that it was actually a launch title for the PS2 at one point. However, in a chat with Destructoid, Katsuhiro Harada admitted that making a third entry wouldn’t likely be the best way to grow the franchise moving forward:
“It’s quite difficult because, you know, Tag is something I’ve always thought of more recently, and [I feel] like it should be some kind of mode within a TEKKEN 9 or 8 or whatever you want to call it.”
When the website dove deeper into what he meant, he noted that the workload for making such a title would ensure that the game wouldn’t come out this generation, but in the next one:
“We have so many more moves than a typical 2D fighter. So much more work is involved in trying to do that with a 3D game…It’s probably a ways off if it were to happen, and so probably not in my working lifetime. So that’s something that the next generation can decide.”
That does seem pretty definitive, doesn’t it? Another thing to note here is that Tekken Tag Tournament wasn’t the biggest of sellers, with the second entry being one that underdelivered in many respects.
Another thing to consider here is current viewpoints on the fighting game series. The 8th mainline entry started out with a bang, including big sales and positive reviews. However, after a while, fans were annoyed with the focus on microtransactions and various other controversial things the developer did. If the tag version were to return, fans might be wary of it from the start, as they would expect these same controversial decisions to return
Either way, it seems as though this is something fans shouldn’t expect for a while.
