In an excerpted piece from an upcoming Gamasuta interview with Tekken X Street Fighter's producer, Katsuhiro Harada, he talks about not really being concerned with the fighting game market getting too saturated.
"The reason for that is because, back in the day when we used to make the previous Tekkens, it was mainly focused on one platform, be it the arcade or PlayStation hardware. Plus the user base was much more narrow; it tended to be 20 year old males," Harada said.
"But now we've noticed there's a broadening of the player base, where they're anywhere between 20 and 40 years of age, and you have various different hardware that are very viable platforms at the same time."
That has lead to a strategy for the series: "We really want to give players many different chances to play on different hardware that they own -- or in a particular situation, whether it be on the go, or at their house, or such. So that's really the reason behind announcing some Tekken titles for different platforms."
He added that the same people pretty much continue to play these titles, but newer and younger players are also entering the fray.
Namco Bandai recently released Tekken Hybrid for the PS3, and have other projects planned as well, including: Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Tekken 3D Prime Edition, a Tekken for the Wii U, and Tekken X Street Fighter.
Do you agree with Harada's opinion that the market won't become too saturated with fighting games? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.
long live fighting games! please do not make a virtual street fighter game where we use our bodies as controllers. if we punch, the fighter punches, etc. we do not need to see out-of-shape people perform dragon punches haha.
I don't think we have to worry as long as the big developers continue to try and put out QUALITY games. It'll be an issue once they and everyone under the sun is trying to cash in by flooding the market with shovelware poverty fighters.
As much as people troll and bitch about every game, they're good for the most part and people want to keep playing and seeing more of them.
lol I really wanna see how the are going to pull off the proyectile characters in the tekken engine
I think it is going to be flooded. Flooded in terms of serious fighting game scenes. I'm sure SFxT is going to sell pretty decently, but I already think there are too many games as it is. The biggest way games are being promoted is by stream play. There are only so many hours competitive fighting game players can spend, and there are only so many competitive fighting gamers.
Time will tell, but if I was a betting man I'd place my money on the market getting saturated.
Well of course I agree!I don't mind having so many fighting games,really.I mean they revolutionized the entire video game industry with competition and entertainment and without them,we'll be stuck with endless shooters like Cock of Duty.Anyways,im glad that fighters are back and are here to stay forever.Thank you Ono for reviving the genre with SF4 and thank you Harada for still keeping Tekken alive.FIGHTING GAMES FTW!TO HELL WITH SHOOTERS!
After seeing what Namco's doing with TT2, I'm mega hyped for Tk x SF.
Still kinda blah with SFxTk since the Gem System announcement. Don't wanna hate on it until they let people actually play with it, though.
I think the market will get saturated, but Namco will not have to worry, only the less popular names will not sell well, Namco has good Marketing and Tekken is well known, now something like Skull Girls should be worried....
"We'd all be stuck with endless shooters."
You spout this while promoting a comparable deluge of fighters.
Quantity does not equal quality. While nobody has the authority to say a handbrake should be applied to fighters in development or being proposed, at the same time you'd like to think that these guys keep an eye on just how flooded their market may become. When you have stacks of titles in circulation they lose their lustre in my opinion combined with the playerbases being fragmented.
That's not to say variety and choice is a bad thing, but it does contribute towards a changing community. Broader and more varied? Sure. But you tend to trade a big chunk of unity when a lot of games are in circulation. I'd be curious to see how in a saturated market various games fight for the status of being EVO's main event for example. Right now it gravitates towards Capcom's offerings, with the Street Fighter series clinging on for a good while. Who knows whats next?
Thing is, the FGC hasn't seen anything like this. Its argued a saturation occured in the late '90s and into the early 2000's though this was without the draw of the internet and the heavy promotion and following major events now have as a direct result of it. I feel the FGC is entering completely new territory and it will be interesting to see how it handles and adapts to it. Variety of games definitely factors into that and presents an interesting challenge for a community that until recently has been tight knit between a small handful of titles.
#4 i think projectiles will have a very slow casting speed,like that QCB+punch move paul phoenix has, that's slow but hits for big damage.
At least that's they way i think they should be handled.
On a side note i can't wait to see how the SF models will look like on TKxSF specially cammy.
That Ryu looks like he's about to punch your mom and dad then shove you to the ground and throw a drink in your face.
there will always be the core, even if the market gets oversaturated, there will still be people playing the games, i know i cant get enought. So they can go on with a little support for the games and focus on little updates and wait some time with a major release when they think people are getting hungry again. 10 years like it was with Third Strike too VI is too long thou, and tekken always got releases and i dont think that will change cause its an easy to pick up game and can be played casually while it has enough depth to also speak to the core i was mentioning earlier.
If people are still buying shooters, I think we'll be fine.
"As long as Capcom doesn't purposely over saturate the fighting genre market".
isn't it already too saturated?
we're getting new fighting games here and there. it's kind of starting to be like the 90's.
not that i mind, though.
#14 not too slow I hope. Even with tracking capabilities fireballs would be far too easy to avoid.
#23 it only seems saturated due to Capcom releasing multiple revisions of essentially the same game. Aside from that the number of fighters are being released at a moderate rate.
of course it will get oversaturated, in this post alone 5 tekken projects are mentioned, and that is just the games we know about.
There has been an SF update every years since SF4 debuted, and it only took 8 months to for UMVC3. New games in these series' are coming out before the old games are fully fleshed out. They arent given time to mature.
I am already tired of it. I see no reason for AE or UMVC3 to exist. They had 10 years to make MVC3, if it wasnt to their liking they should of waited the extra 8 months.
I appreciate the new in thing for developers it to turn every series into a yearly program but it takes away from they excitement and build up.
You can shear a sheep many times, but only skin it once. the video game markets response to this type of developing has been clear= give me what I want, give me more of what I want, but keep me wanting it.
Guitar hero gave them what they wanted to much that they people just didnt want it anymore. COD is going down this path and so will these fighting games if they arent careful
capcom needs to take a page out of Kojimas book. They announce a game, release it 4 years later and it sells through the roof. MGS might be a little bit tired of a franchise, but these games give you something, and tell you that is all you get EVER. Then a couple years later they say, ok we will give you some more, but this is it for real this time. It never is, but gamers want more of what they think they cant have. and fighting games no longer fit in that category.
rant over
Agree? yes