Harada: Tekken's 30-Year Run Came From Market Strategy, Not Just Creativity

On November 9, in a convention hall at the SKY31 Convention inside Lotte World Tower in Seoul, Katsuhiro Harada closed the global track of the Console Game Developers Conference 2026 with a claim that cut against the usual story told about hit games. "It makes absolutely no sense," he said, to argue that Tekken survived 30 years on creativity alone. Harada, now CEO and Game Director of VS Studio, led Tekken's development and its global branding. His lecture was titled "How Global IPs Loved for Over 30 Years Are Created."

His argument was that the Tekken team was a development team that also behaved like a modern publisher. Since the Namco days, he said, sales and marketing staff sat inside the project team. They ran community outreach in various countries and did their own market analysis from the arcade era of the 1990s. When young developers ask him for advice, he puts one question to them: do you actually know what your product is in the context of the market? He said even the gap between Tekken and Soulcalibur cannot be explained by gameplay alone.

The early edge, as he described it, was partly technical and partly timing. As polygon graphics emerged, the team worked with Sony to put the PlayStation chipset into arcade boards before the console launched, making a 3D fighter in a market where Sega's Virtua Fighter had already drawn attention. Developers also joined pricing meetings so that boards sold at full price in Japan could be distributed more cheaply overseas. The Korean version got its own original Korean character slot. Europe, he said, owed much to Sony handling distribution there: the company's reputation from TVs and camcorders turned Tekken into "Sony's fighting game." The team then added European characters and pushed into Northern Europe and Poland.

The sales data he showed pointed the same way. The series has sold over 64 million home console units, with Europe at 40%. Japan appeared as 3% on the slide, though Harada said the real figure was about 2%, meaning more than 98% of sales came from overseas. Knowing where buyers actually were, he argued, mattered more than the game's Japanese origin.

The business model also shaped the design. Arcade matches, paid for by a single coin, ran about three to five minutes. A console game, once bought, offers unlimited play, so the value system differs. Harada said he foresaw the Japanese arcade decline early by visiting overseas sites, and he labeled 2000 to 2010, when arcades shrank and console online play was limited, the dark age of fighting games. The team's answer was to give players reasons to play alone: CG ending cutscenes, side modes such as Tekken Ball and Tekken Force, and the chance to play Starblade or Galaga during loading screens.

Character design followed a similar logic. Candidates were shortlisted by looking at expansion potential in new and existing markets, then deciding whether to target by demographics, geography, or both. Anime fans, for example, can be one audience across nationalities, while geographic targeting depends on country, language and culture. Harada used the Spanish character Miguel as an example: he might appeal to players who like rugged styles, but for marketing, the Iberian Peninsula carried more weight.

Community work was the last pillar. Harada said he noted since the 1990s that publishers and media held sway in Japan, while in North America players held real power, to the point that anger could bring retail refunds and demands for price cuts. So developers hauled arcade cabinets and boards to LAN parties and gym tournaments of 20 to 30 people, rented hotel venues, and announced titles in person. Those events grew into the Tekken World Tour, which links regional competitions through a point system. His slides called for a face for the game, which could be an influential official social account, and for sharing good and bad news alike. Costs, hype timing and contingency plans, they said, must be planned alongside development. Today, he said, how to promote and deliver a game matters far more than the creativity of making a good one.

In looser remarks, he said he spent two weeks stuck in a Cyberpunk 2077 tutorial bug he took for a gimmick, and he now waits about six months before playing big releases. He voiced interest in Korean games drawing on the tension of national division. Asked about his next project, he refused details but said it is not a puzzle game and involves competing against other people. The team has over 30 people with an average age above 50, and he wants to show what veterans can do.