Tekken’s Katsuhiro Harada says the big money of fighting tournaments isn’t reflected in game revenue

Katsuhiro Harada,executive producer for the Tekken franchise, has said that the fighting game market is larger than ever, but the “big money” being made in tournament streaming isn’t reflected in games revenue.

Speaking to The Games Business at Evo France, the development veteran said that, by almost every commercial metric that matters, the genre has seen a boom in popularity in recent years. But what interests Harada more is the ecosystem that has blossomed around fighting games.

“People talked about a golden age of fighting games back in the day, but if you look at the parameters that measure success, whether that’s revenue or copies sold or whatever, there’s actually an increase in the participation of the [genre] as a whole recently,” he explained.

He pointed to the success of streamed fighting tournaments. “Lots of big companies are coming in and putting money into advertisements for these events, and a lot of influencers are making big money off of their streams. But the revenue for our games doesn’t reflect any of this stuff.

“It’s quite interesting to see how that might change. For example, most of the tournaments are licensed for free to people who want to run them or stream them. Occasionally, you’re seeing certain events that pop up where they’re charging pay-per-view, or something like that. Seeing how the money side of this changes, that’s something I’m quite interested in.”

At Evo France, a new character for Tekken 8 – Miary Zo – was revealed. Harada explained that a brand-new character to the franchise can take well over a year to create.

“Since the initial concept isn’t there, you need to do the research from zero,” he said.

“We went to Madagascar [where Zo comes from] to interact with the local population and find out factual details about the culture in the region, before then trying to flesh it into a character. That whole process for a brand-new character is usually a year to 18 months.”

Tekken 8 debuted in February 2024. Within its first year, the title sold over three million copies.