Dragon Ball FighterZ, Tekken 7, other Bandai Namco titles on sale on PC

Two different sales are cutting prices on popular fighting from the big publisher.

For starters, Bandai Namco's own web store is offering steep discounts to titles like Tekken 7 for PC. Steam, meanwhile, is running a Midweek Madness sale that is bringing the cost of Dragon Ball FighterZ down by 30 percent until June 1. The Bandai Namco's direct sale seems to have originally included DBFZ as well, but the website does not currently reflect that offer.

Several other Bandai Namco titles are also involved in the company's sale, including Dark Souls III, Naruto Shippuden titles and more. For the full list of sale items, readers can head to the BN website. 

Free update bringing costumes, customizations to Tekken 7 on May 31

To mark the anniversary of Tekken 7's console release, Bandai Namco is releasing a large DLC pack of costumes and other customizations for free.

The upcoming content has been pulled from previously arcade-only updates to the game, which will now be shared with console users. Players will gain access to more New Japan Pro-Wrestling shirts, the Tanahashi costume and HUD alterations; the Story Mode costume set; Christmas swimsuits; metallic costumes; new looks for Kuma, Panda and King; new hair options and more.

Readers can check out an image containing all the new feaures, posted by Tekken Project Leader Katsuhiro Harada, after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Spring into battle with Tekken 7's newest DLC, Noctis, on March 20

Bandai Namco has confirmed that Noctis Lucis Caelum will be joining the game's cast on the first day of the new season in late March 2018.

The Final Fantasy XV protagonist was first unveiled as one of Tekken 7's guest characters during the Tekken World Tour finals in November 2017. Players who purchase Noctis will not only get his personal stage, Hammerhead, but will also receive five different costumes as part of his DLC offering.

Readers can check out Noctis' new trailer featuring the new stage and costumes after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Tekken World Tour 2018 announced

During the ELEAGUE Tekken Team Takedown, the Tekken World Tour 2018 was officially announced.

Starting at Final Round 2018, 40 events will see players from across the world compete for more than $80,000 in prizes. The finals will take place in Amsterdam, Netherlands, sometime in November 2018 with a single-event prize pool of $25,000.

For this year of the TWT, there are no more regional leaderboards, and there will be less event overlap so that players don't have to pick and choose which event to support. The grand finals event will also now span two days and include 20 players, with one player earning their spot in a last-chance qualifier on day one.

For more information including the schedule and a breakdown of the new points system, readers can check out the official Tekken World Tour website.

Red Bull Conquest circuit to feature Guilty Gear, Tekken, Street Fighter

Red Bull has announced a new tournament circuit that will feature Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, Tekken 7 and Street Fighter V.

Red Bull Conquest will feature 15 qualifiers, named Rally events, all around the United States, culminating in a grand finals tournament in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 16-18, 2018. The winner of each qualifying event, including a last-chance tournament, will be put into a final 16-person bracket to decide the champion for each game.

Conquest events will be held in "Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco and Seattle," with the first taking place on April 28 in Chicago, Illinois.

For more information or to register for Red Bull Conquest, readers can check out the official Red Bull website.

ELEAGUE debuts Tekken competition with Team Takedown

Tekken 7 will apparently be making its ELEAGUE debut on March 3, 2018.

According to a story from TekkenGamer, Tekken Team Takedown will be taking place on that date at the Turner Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. Tickets are currently available for the show.

The format of the show, as well as what players and broadcast talent ELEAGUE will be using for the event, is currently unknown. With March 3 fast approaching, it would seem likely that an official announcement will be coming soon.

Evolution 2018 lineup announced

In a sit-down interview with Mark Julio on Red Bull eSports, Joey "Mr. Wizard" Cuellar revealed the games that will be part of Evo 2018.

The Evolution staff has chosen eight games for competition at this year's Evo: Tekken 7, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev. 2, Injustice 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee and Dragoin Ball FighterZ.

Cuellar also revealed that Rev 2, Melee, T7, SBFZ and SFV will be the five games that are featured in the stadium during Evo Sunday finals.

In addition, Arc System Works made two announcements in videos. The first showed BBTag's Toshimichi Mori revealing that RWBY's Yang Xiao Long will be coming to the game and that both her and Blake Belladonna will be free DLC coming out soon after the game's release. The second featured Guilty Gear's Daisuke Ishiwatari saying that the game's new balance patch will be coming to the PC and console platforms in March 2018. 

Registration for Evo 2018 starts on Feb. 15 at 12 p.m. PST on the official Evo wbesite. Evolution 2018 is coming Aug. 3-5 at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevadad.

Tekken 7 version 1.10, lag reduction patch now available

The newest update for Tekken 7 is currently rolling out on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One across different regions.

This patch includes the input lag reduction fix, which incorporates new updates to Unreal Engine 4 and should help reduce the latency on PlayStation 4. 

There is no currently no word as to when the Steam version of the patch will be out, and Avoiding the Puddle will be making lag comparisons on the consoles versions once the updates have been completed.

Input lag reduction coming to PS4 version of Tekken 7 via patch on Dec. 14

Tekken 7 players on PlayStation 4 will be able to enjoy the game with less inherent latency in the coming days.

Bandai Namco Entertainment's Motohiro Okubo, producer of Tekken 7, announced during the Tekken 7 West Tournament finals that the coming Dec. 14 patch will reduce input lag. Okubo's statement was directed towards the PS4 version only. There is currently no info whether or not if this will be applied to the Xbox One or PC builds.

Tests of Tekken 7 revealed that the PS4 version had the highest amount of lag compared to the other versions. Katsuhiro Harada and Michael Murray addressed to viewers during Tekken World Tour Finals that they were working on a patch to reduce the lag. This came out of updates done to Unreal Engine 4, T7's engine, where games running at 60hz would get a lag reduction of two frames.

You can read Okubo's tweet about it here.

London to host European qualifier for StrongStyle 6

Unequalled Media, Cool Kids Table and Electronic Dojo are partnering to provide European Tekken players a chance at a free trip to StrongStyle 6.

The three entities will be holding a StrongStyle qualifier tournament on Jan. 13, 2018, at EXP Leisure in London, England, with the winning player receiving a paid flight to SS6.

Full details of the event can be found on Smash.gg. StrongStyle 6 takes place in San Jose, California, on Feb. 10-11, 2018. Players can register for the event now at Eventbrite and check out the official StrongStyle website for more details.

Geese Howard coming to Tekken 7 before the end of November?

The former boss of South Town will be making his way to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One before December, if Microsoft and Sony websites are correct.

The European PlayStation blog posted that Geese will be available starting on Nov. 30. This comes more than a week after outlets including Shoryuken noted that the Microsoft website lists Geese's release date as Nov. 29, and neither a statement from Bandai Namco or a retraction from Microsoft has occurred. Microsoft has, however, moved the listed time of the character's release from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., much closer to Sony's Nov. 30 date.

It seems out of the ordinary for Bandai Namco to not advertise the impending release date, but for now players will have to wait and see if Geese makes his appearance in the next few days. There is currently no information on a Steam release for Geese at this time.

Noctis Lucis Caelum is coming to Tekken 7

During the Tekken World Tour finals, Bandai Namco revealed that the protagonist of Final Fantasy XV will be joing Tekken 7 as its second guest character.

Noctis Lucis Caellum comes to Tekken 7 with his sword and several different magic attacks. While no date has been revealed for him, the general time frame of spring 2018 was given for his release.

Readers can check out the trailer after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Geese shows off predictable strength in Tekken 7 gameplay footage

Just days before attendees of the Tekken World Tour finals will have the chance to try him out, Geese Howard has been featured in five minutes of gameplay footage from Gamespot.

The video shows how many of Geese's trademark moves, including specials like repukken, shipukken and jaei ken, have translated into the third dimension. It also shows how his meter will work, as Geese can gain up to three bars during a match. That meter can either be spent to activate Max Mode, which seemingly allows him a cancel much like Akuma's for one bar, or used for supers that seem to cost two bars.

More information on the character will become available during the Tekken World Tour finals on Nov. 12. For now, readers can check out the clip after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Tekken 7 update to introduce more New Japan Pro Wrestling content

Bandai Namco has announced new content in its ongoing collaboration with New Japan Pro Wrestling for Tekken 7. 

Along with new character and account customizations featuring the Bullet Club, Taguchi Japan and King's Rainmaker shirt, Tekken 7 will also be getting a new outfit and rage art for Lars Alexandersson. Both the outfit and special "sling blade" rage art come from popular NJPW wrestler Hiroshi Tanahashi, who uses the move as one of his signature attacks. The game will also play Tanahashi's theme, "Love & Energy," when Lars uses the outfit.

The content will be launching on the arcade version of Tekken 7 on Nov. 18, 2017. There is currently no news as to whether the content will be included in an update for the console and Steam versions of the game, but as New Japan content was included before it seems like a possibility.

Readers can check out the trailer after the jump.

Click to read more ...

NorCal StrongStyle returns Feb. 10-11, 2018

StrongStyle is back again for Tekken 7!

The dedicated Tekken tournament series in NorCal will return on Feb. 10-11, 2018, in San Jose, California. The venue will be at the city's DoubleTree by Hilton hotel. The 10/0 team, along with Team Spooky, will be handling production duties while Eightarc and Qanba USA are two of the confirmed sponsors for the event as of this time.

You can watch the teaser trailer, featuring laughing from organizer Bronson Tran, after the jump!

Click to read more ...

Tekken World Tour finals coming Nov. 12, playable Geese at event

The Tekken World Tour 2017 will conclude in San Francisco, California, in early November.

City View at Metreon will be the location where 16 of the top competitors in Tekken 7 battle for $50,000 in prize money. This 16-player bracket will be comprised of the top five players from the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific TWT leaderboards as well as this year's Evolution champion, JDCR. 

There will also be added bonuses for those who attend the event as spectators. Demo stations featuring Tekken 7's next DLC character, Geese Howard, will be set up for play before he is available to the general public, and Tekken merchandise booths and a meet-and-greet with Katsuhiro Harada and Michael Murray of the Tekken Team will also be available.

Readers interested in the Tekken World Tour finals can get more information and buy tickets at Eventbrite.

Is StrongStyle coming back?

Northern California's Tekken-focused tournament series may be making a return after a layoff of more than three years.

During recent streams on the NorCal StrongStyle Twitch account, NCSS staff member and storied Tekken player Bronson Tran has talked to viewers about the possibility of an upcoming event, asking for their input. He has polled people on their Tekken 7 platform of choice, interest in side tournaments and even details about venue. 

Tran even responded to Twitter comments comparing StrongStyle to Halley's Comet by saying, "I hear it's coming back around orbit." The last StrongStyle was held in September 2014, and was preceded by StrongStyle 4 in January 2010.

While this is clearly no confirmation of anything, it does seem like the NCSS staff is preparing the community for an announcement of some kind. Tekken players will just have to wait and see if StrongStyle does indeed make its return. (Full disclosure: IPLAYWINNER partnered with NorCal StrongStyle to help produce its 2010 and 2014 events.)

Archive of AfreecaTV Tekken League season two top four finals

While JDCR, Saint and Jeondding were dominating at SoCal Regionals, there were four more South Korean players fighting for first place at NicegameTV's AfreecaTV Tekken League second season finale.

Lowhigh, Malgu, Begin and ROX Gaming's Knee fought through the 16-player bracket in NGTV's multi-week tournament series to end up at the round of four. They all converged at AfreecaTV's FreecUP Studio at Seoul's Gangnam District. The champion received ₩3,000,000 while the runner-up snagged ₩2,000,000. Instead of using arcade setups, the top four finals were running on linked PCs introduced midway through this concluded season.

You can watch all the three hour-long finals (videos 33-39), along with the rest of season two, after the jump!

Click to read more ...

Steam sale discounts Tekken 7, other Bandai Namco titles

The most recent edition of The King of Iron Fist Tournament and other games have been marked down as part of Steam's Bandai Namco Publisher Weekend sale, taking place Sept. 14-18, 2017.

Tekken 7 will cost players just $29.99 for the event, a savings of $20. Other series affected by the sale include Dragon Ball Xenoverse, Naruto Ninja Storm, several One Piece titles and more.

For the complete list of games affected, readers can head to the official Steam website.

More online improvements come to Tekken 7 in new update

A new patch has rolled out for Tekken 7, bringing with it more fixes for netplay and the support for upcoming DLC.

According to Tekken Project Leader Katsuhiro Harada, console version 1.05 seeks to further improve Tekken's online experience with "enhancement of Netcode & Enhanced packet loss measures." The game will also now migrate host when a tournament creator leaves so that the event does not immediately end. There are also bug fixes and changes to information shown on the leaderboard, as well as the groundwork for the Ultimate Tekken Bowl downloadable content. 

Harada said the team plans to update the game again in September, and that game balance may be addressed, but nothing is set at this time.