Katsuhiro Harada is best known as being the Producer and Director of the Tekken franchise, but now he’s working on something different. According to CyberConnect 2’s “Piro Live! New Year’s Live Broadcast Special 2021″ programme, his latest project for Bandai Namco Entertainment is turning out to have the largest development cost ever in the publisher’s history.
The project isn’t a new Tekken game — it’s not a fighting game at all — but Harada wouldn’t elaborate more. He did say it was “incredible that the higher-ups approved of this. Well, the approval has passed, its just that due to the coronavirus, we haven’t really been able to properly start the project.”
Harada also stated he was unlikely to work on any other fighting game apart from Tekken in the future; he’s still “more involved than the viewers think” in that franchise. The director has previously worked on other fighting titles like Soulcalibur and Pokkén Tournament but won’t any longer. This is likely due to him prioritising the projects he feels like he can complete before he retires.
When he was younger, Harada stated he felt he’d be able to complete 50 more titles after the end of Tekken 3, due to their relatively short development time. As development time has gotten longer, things haven’t worked out that way; he has credits on 23 titles released after Tekken 3. Now he’s not even sure if he’ll manage to complete three more projects before he retires. If he concentrates solely on completely new projects, he’ll likely only release two more games. If another Tekken game is included, he may be able to complete three titles.
Despite taking part in Famitsu’s end of year interviews with over 100 Japanese creators, he made no mention of his new project. Instead, he confirmed development for Tekken 7’s Season 4 is well underway. They’ve also upgraded the multiplayer netcode for the game, something fairly important if the game is to stay relevant within the eSports scene, of which he’s in charge for Bandai Namco.
[Source: Piro Live! New Year’s Live Broadcast Special 2021 via Gematsu]
