It may be hard to believe this but it’s been more than five years now since Bandai Namco released Tekken 7 for the console and PC market. Since then it has established itself as a major staple in the fighting game community and is now widely considered one of the best fighting games in recent memory. To emphasize this, the director of the series, Katsuhiro Harada, has revealed on Twitter that Tekken 7 has now sold more than 9 million units worldwide, bringing the franchise total to a whopping 53 million units shipped. This now makes the title the best-selling entry in the entire franchise, which began way back in 1994.
For those who think this is merely a mild achievement need only look at the historical significance of this feat. Tekken 7 now holds a record that many thought would never be beaten. For 26 years, the title of the best-selling Tekken game was held by what many consider to be one of the greatest fighting games of all time, Tekken 3, which released way back in 1998. For 26 years, Tekken 3 was the best-selling entry with 8.2 million copies sold, which in an of itself is an insane milestone. That longstanding record is now broken, and Tekken 7 now reigns supreme.
With four different seasons that spanned five years, Tekken 7 easily has the most amount of content to offer from any one of the Tekken titles in the franchise. This more than likely had a major factor to it’s long life, as well as it’s continued support in the fighting game scene, as it’s essentially become a mainstay in the EVO tournament. The logical next step would be a full-fledged sequel. This could be a potential watch as EVO 2022 is coming this Summer and many fighting game developers have used them as a platform to announce new IPs or projects.