Key Takeaways
1. Katsuhiro Harada doubts the feasibility of a standalone Tekken Tag Tournament 3 due to competition from new fighting games.
2. Harada emphasizes the challenges of developing a new Tekken Tag game, particularly with the extensive work required for 3D fighters.
3. Instead of a separate game, Harada suggests that tag-team features could be integrated into future Tekken titles like Tekken 8 or 9.
4. The Tekken franchise has a rich history with previous tag games, but sales for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 fell short of expectations.
5. The primary Tekken series has achieved significant success, selling 57 million units worldwide by 2024, contrasting with the lower performance of the tag games.
In a conversation at Evo 2025, Katsuhiro Harada, who is the producer and executive game director of the Tekken Project, shared his thoughts on the possibility of making Tekken Tag Tournament 3. He showed some doubt about the idea of launching Tekken Tag as a separate game, especially with the tough competition in the fighting game scene, particularly with new titles like Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, 2XKO, and Invincible VS on the horizon.
Challenges in Development
During a talk with Destructoid, Harada was joined by Kohei Ikeda, the Chief Producer and Game Director of Tekken 8, along with Producer Michael Murray, who acted as a translator. He openly discussed the challenges they face in creating another Tekken Tag Tournament game.
Harada pointed out that there are numerous tag-team fighters already available, and considering how long it takes to develop a Tekken game, it wouldn’t make sense to divert their attention from the ongoing updates and patches for Tekken 8.
Future of Tekken Tag
Harada mentioned:
“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 asked if the Tekken Project was moving away from the idea of a standalone Tekken Tag 3, Harada responded:
“If we start now to make a Tekken Tag Tournament 3 by the time that they’re no longer popular, that’s when Tag Three would come out. 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.”
A Look Back at Tekken
The Tekken franchise has a rich history, including spin-off games like Tekken Tag Tournament, which came out in 1999 as a launch title for the PlayStation 2. This game introduced tag-team matches that weren’t part of the main story, taking place between Tekken 3 and 4.
Later on, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was released in 2011 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and later for the Wii U. This game was well-received for its large selection of characters from the main Tekken series and its revamped gameplay mechanics.
However, it only sold 1.5 million units in total, which was below Bandai Namco’s expectations of 840,000 copies sold in Europe and Japan by the end of Fall 2012. In contrast, the primary Tekken games have seen immense success, with a total of 57 million units sold worldwide as of 2024.
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