Tekken 8" will feature cross-play for the first time in the series.

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Tekken 8" will feature cross-play for the first time in the series.
[Players on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC will be able to play together in a multiplayer mode that will also feature the popular rollback netcode system popular in fighting games. The game will also feature a rollback netcode system, a popular feature in fighting games. Harada made the announcement on Twitter (opens in new tab) in response to a question from a fan.

Harada also took Sony and Microsoft a bit to task, stating that he wanted to implement cross-play during the "Tekken 7" era and went into development wanting to do so, but that Microsoft and Sony's conflicting stances over cross-play on consoles became a practical barrier. This despite the fact that both companies had stated they were open to it.

"Remember a few years ago when they announced they were open to cross-play? But in fact, at the time, they were not actively supporting third parties, and the hurdles were quite high," Harada said (opens in new tab).

Rollback netcode, on the other hand, is a welcome but expected part of modern fighting games. This is a code designed to make online fighting games more competitive, which is a big deal in this genre of gaming, which probably has the largest second-by-second twitch response. The code serves to smooth out gameplay by immediately displaying a player's actions, while at the same time predicting the actions of opponents and quickly "rolling back" if they do not.

This is in contrast to the old netcode, which always waited until both players had input before acting. Rollback helps reduce the time lag between input and animation.

As to why it was not announced in advance, Harada said (opens in new tab) that it was because people would just be disgusted and disappointed with the implementation of a "standard" feature. In short, they didn't want to hear people whine about a lackluster announcement that was technically impressive and would take hundreds of hours of coding and implementation.

Oh, and speaking of technically impressive: the recommended specs for PCs are probably going to be pretty intense.

"It's not confirmed yet, but if you want to play in 4K natively, the higher the specs, the better," Harada replied to a fan inquiry.

"One thing I can tell you," he continued (opens in new tab), "if you are in an environment where you have to worry about specs, I would recommend playing on a console.

Tekken 8 looks to be the fighting game event of the year. You can check out all the characters that have been confirmed so far at this PC Gamer (opens in new tab).

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