A lot of Tekken fans were up in arms about the inclusion of the microtransactions in the latest "Tekken Talk." Read on to learn about why they added microtransactions and some history about the rising game development costs.
TEKKEN Directors Explains The Rising Costs of the Game Industry
"Tekken Shop" To Be Added To Maintain Interest
During last week’s Tekken Talk Live Broadcast, the Tekken 8 developers and directors explained the reasoning behind the inclusion of the Tekken Shop feature. Fans had mixed reactions regarding the inclusion of microtransactions in Tekken 8 in the form of classic outfits (for Jin, Jun, Kazuya, and Xiaoyu), avatar customization items for the player avatar, and custom item collaborations, with the latest one being from UNIQLO.
They addressed the comments during the live broadcast saying:
"We hear that some people might have some kind of allergic reaction when they hear 'shop,' but it's more trying to update the game and keep it fresh with new customization items." said Yasuda as translated by Michael Murray.
They even compared this to what they did in the previous iteration, where they added new customization items for the characters for major patches, saying:
"As you've seen what we did with Tekken 7, we tried to refresh the game and provide a better experience overall, rather than just trying to make money off of these individual items, the thinking is the same for Tekken 8 in that we're trying to make it a better game, and this is just one of the ways that we plan to do that. So please keep that in mind."
The developers and directors said that they will periodically be adding items to the Tekken Shop at least once or twice a month so that characters will have more options to choose from rather than the base amount of apparel that we currently have.
Costs Are Rising, Ways Are Changing
Executive Game Director of Tekken, Katsuhiro Harada, acknowledged the reaction from the fans later on during the broadcast by saying that the development costs and prices for AAA games have drastically risen from what they used to be. He went on to say: "We would like to ask a favor [from] everyone that they update their thinking to the current environment of game development and how games are consumed, etc,"
"Games to create now are just so much more expensive than even Tekken 7 was, so it's several times of[sic] that when we're thinking about the current platform of games," said Harada as translated by Murray.
He went on to explain that adding these legacy costumes aren’t simply just "copy/pasting it into the game" as that isn’t how it works. He further reinforced this point by saying:
"You can't just take those old assets from Tekken 4 and paste them into the current generation of hardware and make it look fine."
Lastly, they further reiterated that the money made from the microtransactions doesn’t go straight into their pockets but will go into Tekken 8’s development budget. Murray stated on behalf of Harada’s explanation that "The point we're really trying to make, though, is that it's not like [the money] is going into the coffers of Bandai Namco," and that "We want to improve the game with these updates that we're providing for free that Harada was talking about, and to be able to do that, we have a large development team that we have to pay for."
Murray concludes the conversation about it saying that "this is how we're using these funds to try and make the game better, rather than just trying to make money for the sake of making money."
Blast From The Past
In a recent post by Harada on Twitter(X) in reply to @FGAnniversaries about Tekken 5’s 19th release anniversary for the PS2, he recounted his experience developing Tekken 5 and how porting, development, and costs have changed throughout his time as a director.
He started it off by saying that at the time they didn’t have a concrete plan but went with developing things along the way. This included putting in the Devil Within game mode–a side story game featuring Jin’s search for his mothe–as well as adding in the first 3 Tekken games and Starblade as playable games in the "Arcade History" mode.
Harada explained that "At the time, no one scolded us for such a way of proceeding (cuz We were all immature)." Development and porting were faster as well as having much lower labor costs than today’s processes. "Now it is completely different. Everything has become huge, all costs have skyrocketed, and it takes a lot longer."
He also stated that as games have become a bigger industry, more stakeholders are involved. Harada even says that more "self-proclaimed industry people," executives who are neither creators nor developers, are in the industry. He noted that there are more and more people warning him to not execute something right off the bat, telling him " Don’t do it just because of an idea or passion."
He ended the post by saying: "Nevertheless, no matter how well-planned and smart you are, no one can guarantee that the game will be a success until the very end. This is the only thing that hasn’t changed much lol!!"
