Speaking during an interview with MP1st, Tekken 8 boss Katsuhiro Harada touched base on the possible return of the classic Team Battle Mode from earlier games in the series, suggesting it’s not as popular as Tekken fans may have originally thought.
Harada-san explained that Tekken 2’s Team Battle Mode was the most popular incarnation of the feature, but following this it lost a lot of momentum. As such, there’s no guarantee that it may come back in the future, but he still didn’t rule out the possibility of it returning.
That depends if there’s demand for it. We’ve been conducting user surveys at considerable cost since the offline era of fighting games. Since the move to online, we’ve been analysing all kinds of data statistically.
While I’m sure that many have played the Team Battle mode with friends and family and have good memories associated with it, we found that it wasn’t played by players as much as the community might think.
The Team Battle mode in TEKKEN 2 was played the most, but as the series progressed, it became less and less chosen. If the mode were to make a comeback, people might play it nostalgically for the first few times. However, when looked at from the perspective of the entire player base, many players will call for different content to be added instead of a mode that is not demanded for. Moreover, in the modern age, adding such modes is not as cheap and easy as it previously was, and involves significant debugging costs and more.
Team Battle Mode had players picking a series of character before going head-to-head with each other, with victory decided by the player who successful eliminates their opponent’s whole team. It was a staple of the earlier Tekken games alongside the likes of Survival Mode, where you picked a single character and had to survive battle after battle until defeat.
Tekken 8 is now available for PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
[Source – MP1st]