Tekken 8’s Demo Has Attracted More Than Just Positive Feedback, It’s Increased Pre-Orders, Says Director

2023 saw two giants pillars in the fighting game world get two new entries with Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombart 1, so in 2024 it’s now Tekken 8’s turn in the fighting game spotlight.

Ahead of its release at the end of this month, players can download a demo of the game to wet their feet, something that game director Katsuhiro Harada says has done more than result in positive feedback from fans.

The demo has in fact helped increase pre-orders for the coming fighting game, with Harada saying on Twitter that pre-orders are “steadily increasing” since the demo’s release.

Harada also confirmed that issues players may be experiencing now in the demo won’t be there in the final release of the game.

“The TEKKEN8 demo, which is now available, has attracted very positive feedback and preorders are steadily increasing. Thank you all for your support. And we will be fixing the problems found in the demo version in the full product version. Please wait for a while for the release.”

It’s not entirely the biggest surprise that pre-orders are increasing thanks to the demo, but it does show the value of what a demo can do for a game ahead of its release.

Demos used to be a huge thing for games back in the PS3 and earlier generations, but they’ve since become fewer and far between.

There’s a lot of reasons for why, with a large part of the blame going to development schedules not allowing the time for a demo to be sliced out and made available to players, and some games definitely benefit from a demo more than others.

Tekken 8 however is the kind of game that benefits greatly from having a demo available, and it’ll be interesting to see how big of a launch week Tekken 8 has, in part due to the demo.

Source – [Katsuhiro Harada on Twitter]