According to a report on Spanish website Kio Nya, Bandai Namco Games will release Tekken 7 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2016.
The site claims that the release was mentioned at the Madrid Games Week event by David Fraile, the marketing boss for Namco’s Spanish arm. No further details were revealed, although it’s only a matter of time before we hear something more concrete—Tekken 7 has been out in arcades for some time now, after all.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard murmurs of a home console release of Bandai Namco’s latest fighting game sequel. Earlier this year, an Epic Games video seemingly outed a PS4 and Xbox One release of the upcoming title, and considering the series’ history, a console release is pretty much inevitable at this point. Namco has constantly been evolving the arcade release since its debut in Japan this March, adding more characters to the roster and tweaking the gameplay.
Tekken 7 is being marketed as the conclusion to the Mishima family feud, which has been a central plot thread for the fighting franchise since the the beginning. Indeed, the intro sequence certainly paints an epic showdown of sorts, depicting Kazuya and Heihachi locked in a brutal duel to the death inside a raging volcano. At one point, it looks like Kazuya has the advantage over his father as he calls upon the power of the Devil Gene to aid him in battle. Tekken 7 also introduces Kazumi Mishima, who was previously thought to have passed away while giving birth to her son, Kazuya. As it turns out, she’s now the game’s final boss.
Namco seems pretty focused on interesting new characters this time around, including the Saudi Arabian brawler, Shaheen, Jack-7, Gigas, and the controversial Lucky Chloe. Of course, it wouldn’t be Tekken without some familiar faces returning for another punch-up, so expect to see the likes of Paul, Law, King, Lars, Lili and others mixing it up with the newcomers. In total, Tekken 7 will support 24 characters, although the roster appears to have been trimmed slightly in comparison to the bloated lineup of Tekken 6 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2.
Check out the latest Tekken 7 gameplay footage here. Tekken debuted in 1994 for arcades and later made the jump to PlayStation as one of the first titles available for the then-new games console. The series has remained a staple of the PlayStation brand ever since, and has gone on to sell 44 million copies worldwide. Tekken 3 remains the most successful entry in the franchise to date, and second only to Super Smash Bros. Brawl as the biggest-selling fighting game of all time with 8.3 million units sold.