Tekken 8 lead promises all the essential fighting game staples, tells everyone to "shut up and sit the hell down"

Tekken 8's director has unveiled a slew of new gameplay details, including cross-play, rollback netcode, and character numbers.

Tekken series creative lead Katsuhiro Harada has been a chatty Cathy on Twitter of late, answering a slate of questions from followers surrounding Tekken 8. Harada confirms that Tekken 8 will have cross-play, a feature he's been after since Tekken 7 was released but wasn't able to see the light of day.

This means Tekken 8 players across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S can punch each other to their delight. Keep in mind Bandai Namco's new fighting game won't be launching on last-gen consoles, so we won't find PS4 players going up against new-gen PS5 players.

Elsewhere, Harada also confirmed rollback netcode, a staple of modern fighting games that helps negate input lag when playing online, would feature in Tekken 8. This is fantastic news to hardcore fighting game fans and Tekken followers alike, but it's packaged with a message to "shut up and sit the hell down" from Harada to the Twitter user who asked the question.

Finally, Harada bragged that Tekken 8 would have more playable characters than "Capcom-san." The series lead probably refers to the forthcoming Street Fighter 6 here, which features an impressive 18 playable fighters at launch. If this claim holds up, Tekken 8 players could get ready to play as storied fighters from across the series' history.

Tekken 8 was first teased with a chaotic and confusing trailer, bundled in with a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance from Harada at EVO 2022, so these comments from Harada are really just par for the course at this point. A more recent trailer depicted the death of a long-standing character, and even Harada couldn't believe how dead Heihachi was. 

Check out our huge Tekken 8 preview from our hands-on time with the new fighting game, as well as comments from Harada.