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On April 9, 2023, Tekken 8's director Katsuhiro Harada dropped a massive piece of news that players of the series had been waiting to hear. He has confirmed that Bandai Namco's upcoming fighting game will feature cross-play across platforms. Essentially, gamers from PCs and consoles will be able to match online and play against each other.
This is something that will make a lot of fans happy since fighting games featuring cross-play will help keep the title active and the playerbase healthy.
Further, this is also the first time that a Tekken game will feature cross-play since it was a lot more difficult in the previous entries on account of technical problems.
Full details regarding cross-play confirmation for Tekken 8
The question regarding cross-play in Tekken 8 was raised by a fan in one of Katsuhiro Harada's posts. This aspect was not mentioned initially, but it seems like fans can rest easy now as the confirmation has now arrived from the director himself.
As it happens, Katsuhiro Harada tweeted the following when asked about cross-play:
"Crossplay? Of course I will."
Naturally, the wording may seem a bit confusing since English is not his first language. However, it is a confirmation and a big one at that. At the same time, he tweeted the following as well to confirm why the previous Tekken titles did not feature cross-play:
"BTW, When the previous generation consoles were released, I had already proposed crossplay between the two platformers. However, at that time, they were at odds with each other over their mutual interests (and P2P security issue) & repeatedly refused."
This makes sense as previous generation consoles had lots of technical difficulties. Apart from that, online-play was not implemented as effectively back in 2016 when Tekken 7 was released as it is now.
Tekken 8, on the other hand, has been developed on Unreal Engine 5 and is crafted specifically for next-gen devices. Hence, the developers have all the tools to implement brand new features.
In any case, not only is this news big, but it also ensures that Tekken 8 won't fall behind its competitors like Street Fighter 6, as the latter will also feature cross-play. It helps to maintain the playerbase and also future-proofs the game.
Tekken 8 is going to be released in 2024 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
