It’s been six lengthy years for the reason that final Soul Calibur recreation, 2018’s Soulcalibur 6, and followers haven’t heard a peep out of Bandai Namco a couple of sequel. With Tekken seemingly the main focus of the writer’s combating recreation ambition, the once-great Soul Calibur seems to have fallen by the wayside. However why? In a remarkably frank tweet, Tekken chief Katsuhiro Harada pointed the finger at various elements, together with Bandai Namco itself.
Harada responded to a tweet from a consumer who claimed that if Soul Calibur 2 had a director like Harada himself, then gross sales of that recreation and the sequence would have grown over time. The consumer even pointed to mechanics within the older Soul Calibur video games that have been ditched for more moderen entries as a motive for the franchise’s decline.
However Harada insisted there was far more to Soul Calibur’s demise than the easy elimination of recreation mechanics. He pointed to the departure of key workers on the undertaking amid structural issues at Bandai Namco that even affected him at one level. “I can inform you that the organizational modifications and resolution makers at Namco Bandai had an important deal to do with it,” Harada stated.
Harada stated the Soul Calibur sequence had a “robust chief” earlier than and an “elite” group of builders. Within the early days there was “friction” between the Tekken and Soul Calibur groups because the rivalry between them intensified. The robust chief give up, however “Tekken and SC have been at all times rivals inside the firm as effectively,” Harada added. “Extra so than folks can think about.”
“The 2 initiatives had completely different visions, completely different growth insurance policies, and really alternative ways of interested by the model. It’s not that we hated one another. Nonetheless, they have been such rivals that it was not stunning to assume so.”
Harada revealed that when the combating recreation market shifted from the arcades to dwelling consoles, Soul Calibur outsold Tekken in North America, whereas Tekken did effectively in arcades. “SC was at all times seen as having a promising future, even inside Namco, and was thought-about to be able to increasing past the realm of combating recreation in a somewhat world perspective,” Harada stated.
Then we get to the nitty gritty of Harada’s argument: that online game builders have been confronted with changing into managers as they progressed alongside their profession path, versus changing into nice online game builders. “In truth, on the time, the one strategy to advance one’s profession was below such a system,” Harada stated. In consequence, key builders could be “peeled away” from initiatives to work on different issues, and this had a unfavorable impact on Soul Calibur.
“Undertaking Soul was struggling to outlive (or so it appeared to me), particularly amongst its youthful members,” Harada stated. “Nonetheless, evidently it was tough for them to keep up their imaginative and prescient, will, and organizational construction now that they’re not within the recreation development-centered world of the previous, however somewhat ‘a recreation growth group that is only one of all the companies within the group corporations.’”
Harada then mentioned his personal expertise of this, the place he turned the pinnacle of a brand new division known as International Enterprise Growth, “which had nothing to do with recreation growth.”
“This meant that from an organization organizational standpoint, I used to be out of the Tekken Undertaking, each when it comes to the corporate itself, its divisions and departments, and its finances administration,” Harada defined.
“This was not my thought, after all, however was determined by the administration on the time based on the corporate coverage I discussed earlier.”
In response, Harada took it upon himself to steer the Tekken Undertaking regardless of having a totally completely different job. Briefly, he continued to do the job he had been forcibly “peeled away” from.
Why? “I knew that the soil and currents of such a big group simply occur from issues which might be occurring as a consequence of delusions brought on by the group thoughts and a head appointed solely for profession development, with no love for that recreation title and no long run imaginative and prescient, can’t be good for the survival of the sequence or the fan neighborhood,” Harada stated.
“And we, Tekken Undertaking, at all times stated that ‘the rights to the title belong to the corporate, however the fan neighborhood can solely depend on the group that has the desire to make the sport.’
So, from the very starting, I made a decision to utterly break the ‘rule of tacit understanding in an organization.’”
The Tekken Undertaking group successfully turned impartial, like a separate firm, a transfer Harada stated “was very a lot disliked by the writer division heads… Yeah, he hated me a lot.”
The Tekken group have been described as a gaggle of outlaws, because it was the one group inside Bandai Namco able to impartial decision-making.
“If there is just one main distinction between Undertaking Soul and the opposite corporations, that is the one one,” Harada stated.
“There are a lot of titles which have disappeared in the middle of these previous transitions. There aren’t any apparent villains in that historical past. They’re all being chipped away in the middle of a bigger pattern.
“Nonetheless, I feel… me and the Tekken Undertaking, have been evil within the eyes of the group corporations.”
This, then, was the important thing to Tekken’s survival and Soul Calibur’s demise, no less than from Harada’s standpoint.
“So we have been by no means obedient, however at all times a depraved group with a powerful will (I’ve realized by way of these experiences that, sadly, I in all probability have a nasty persona),” he stated.
“I feel this was the one distinction between Tekken Undertaking and Undertaking Soul. I feel that the truth that the variety of members who had the drive to maintain the title alive, even when they needed to leap by way of all types of stress, decreased because the group modified, and that is without doubt one of the elements that weakened Undertaking Soul little by little. I’m not saying that’s all, nevertheless it was a giant issue.
“Occurred as a consequence of organizational coverage, not particular person issues.”
So the place will we go from right here? Is Soul Calibur really useless? Harada supplied a glimmer of hope, with out confirming plans for a sequel.
“However from my standpoint, I do not assume the fireplace of Undertaking Soul has been extinguished,” he stated. “There are nonetheless a number of folks within the firm who’ve the desire to do it. I want to consider that they’re simply not united now.”
Wesley is the UK Information Editor for IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You may attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.