I have a ton of memories playing Tekken. Most of them include me being terrible at it, and wanting to play Mortal Kombat. There is no denying the fanbase here in the good old USofA. People really really like Tekken, and those people are in for a bit of bad news.
Though Tekken 6 is doing outstanding in Japan, New Zeleand, Canada and a bunch of other places, it doesn’t look like it will be coming to American arcades. The lack of a Tekken 6 arcade here in the States is mainly due to Namco totally screwing over arcade owners last time around, and price.
Namco released Tekken 5 in December of 2004 to arcade owners for 6000 dollars a pop. Two months later the PS2 version of the game was released for 50 dollars. That’s bad business Namco, bad business indeed. So for the launch of Tekken 6 the previously scorned American arcade owners have decided to pass for that, and the fact the cabinet costs a whopping 12,000 dollars. That’s a lot of dollars, especially when the PS3 version of the game is going to come out in a few months.
While it is sad to see arcade owners getting screwed by price and not being able to have a new game in their shops, it is kind of representative of the current state of arcades. It’s unfortunate but their time has passed. With the console version of Tekken 6 I can play against my friends who are scattered all over the world, not just the guy who sits in the arcade wearing a members only jacket and a Rush tee shirt.
My suggestion (and really the only option) is to wait. Wait until this fall for Tekken to come to the PS3. Don’t throw Molotov cocktails at your arcade, don’t slash the tires of the arcade owner, just have patience.
[via SDTekken]
