Sales of Bandai Namco Entertainment’s long-running Tekken fighting game series have surpassed 55 million copies.
Speaking during an interview with Shuhei Yoshida on the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences YouTube channel, director/producer Katsuhiro Harada revealed that the franchise has sold over 55 million copies to date. In terms of regional split, 51% of sales of the Tekken series come from Europe while 30% come from America.
Harada mentioned that he was curious to know why the Tekken series is so popular in Europe and America. What he learned is that players from both regions have a very different play style compared to players from Japan. He pointed out that fighting games are typically centered around arcades in Asia. He realized that while Tekken is a competitive series, most players weren’t aiming to be the world champion, and that the majority of them were playing with their friends, their siblings, or their parents. As such, it became clear to him that the fighting game scene was relatively casual.
The Tekken series director/producer mentioned that he started thinking from the perspective of wanting to make a game that would appeal to the casual audience. Before, he was focused on strategic depth and character balance, but he felt that it wasn’t enough. While the aforementioned elements are important, he felt the series needed to be appealing even without playing at that level. Ultimately, that meant a focus on its characters. He gave the example of a character that uses capoeira, such as Eddy Gordo. He said that just pressing a few buttons would make him dance. According to Harada, this is the joy of action games. He said that story-wise, too, the characters should elicit a reaction. Additionally, aside from the main fighting game mode, the studio added a bunch of small mini games for players to enjoy with their favorite characters. These are the points he kept in mind as the development team made the transition to home consoles.
