The latest installment of this long standing fighting franchise sees some major shifts away from the genre norms. Most impressive of these is the free to play model. Tekken Revolution is now out on the PSN. You can go get it as of reading this article, and it doesn’t cost a dime. This should immediately have you asking about the details to their monetization methods, but it should please you to hear that they’re directly emulating fighting game arcade culture: Tekken Revolution will subsist off of tokens. Every time you play, you will spend 1 coin. Players will receive free coins every day, and if they want to play more they have to essentially put in quarters. Only each token should cost less than an actual quarter. And rest assured that arcade culture lives on, in that winners take on challenger after challenger until they are defeated on the same coin (though this is done by rewarding extra tokens for free games every time you win, but it amounts to the same thing).
This isn’t the only way the Tekken Revolution stands apart from most fighting games either. Tekken Revolution has what you would almost call RPG elements. As players use specific fighters, those fighters will undergo stat growth. Players will be able to focus this growth in three different areas: Health increases, Damage increases, or Critical Strike Chance. I’m not sure how that will reflect on the seriousness of the game as a competitive fighter, but it’s going to be used to assist in a players match making. Players with similar levels of stat growth will be paired against one another, in hopes that they have spent similar amounts of time playing their respective fighters.
We were told that new fighters may be included, but the developers were unwilling to divulge a complete roster. They did say that new characters will be unlocked by earning points through fights, and spending these points of “gift packs”. These gift packs will unlock a fighter at random. Ya know, to keep things fresh.
This could be a really cool take on fighting games, bringing back the arcade feel, plus a little extra with the free tokens given each day. If you’re a Tekken fan, why not? I mean, It’s free.
