After the surprising announcement of Tekken 8 being officially in development and the more shocking that probably being the first Tekken game to go console first instead of the iconic cycle of Arcade-first-then-consoles, Katsuhiro Harada speaks for the first time.

And it was with IGN that Katsuhiro Harada gave some early details about the game and of course is not the only thing that he talked about, but I want here to focus on Tekken 8.

Well, there is NO DOUBT that Tekken 8 is being built within Unreal Engine 5 and Katsuhiro Harada said that development is going great with aspects like sweat and water flow on fighter's body all in gameplay as part of Unreal Engine 5 capacity.

The game is not from a “remasterization” of Tekken 7, it is a brand new Tekken being built from scratch.

Harrada admitted that they are still working with Epic Games (the owner and developer of Unreal Engine) with some optimizations including input.

There was a part dedicated to Netcode Rollback and Harada is not ready to talk about it yet for Tekken 8 yet and I find it interesting why he doesn’t have anything to say while the industry is moving with it.

In a TLDR, rollback netcode is a means to overcome the challenges of online gaming when response to button presses needs to be as quick as possible and lag can ruin the experience and this technique makes possible that rather than waiting for input to be received from other players before simulating the next frame, a game server can predicts the inputs they will send and simulates the next frame without delay using that assumption.

About Tekken 8 possibly being the first Tekken game to skip Arcade, he said: 

“What we can say is that this is the first time in the history of the series that we've announced a console version first. So that in itself is quite notable. And that's all we can say at this point.”

For those who enjoyed some of the guests that the game has, while there are no joint ventures public with Bandai Namco, Katsuhiro Harada does not rule out that Tekken 8 features guest fighters during its lifetime.

And finally (and the only non-Tekken 8) that deserves to be highlighted, Harrada said that working with Masahiro Sakurai to bring Kazuya Mishima to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was shocking and gives him credit.

“He had already had his own thoughts about what makes 'Tekken Tekken.' So it was surprising but also refreshing to see that he came in and didn't ask questions, but said, 'I've played a lot of Tekken and studied it, and this is what I feel is important for the game,' right off the bat.”

He believes that Sakurai is the proper person to develop a Super Smash Bros. game if Nintendo is in plan for the next official game.