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It looks like it’s the final round for Tekken’s Chief Producer and Game Director, with Katsuhiro Harada announcing on X (formerly Twitter) that he will be stepping down from his role at Bandai Namco, and departing the company.
In his post on the 8th of December 2025, coincidentally the last day of Tekken’s 30th Anniversary, Harada announced;
“I’d like to share that I’ll be leaving Bandai Namco at the end of 2025.
With the TEKKEN series reaching its 30th anniversary—an important milestone for a project I’ve devoted much of my life to—I felt this was the most fitting moment to bring one chapter to a close.”
Harada has been a mainstay of the Tekken series since its early days, cutting his teeth in Namco’s arcade business and voicing the characters of Marshall Law and Yoshimitsu, before stepping into the directors’ seat for Tekken 3. From here, he continued to help the franchise grow and expand, reaching a General Manager position within Bandai Namco while overseeing the Tekken project.
“Looking back, I was fortunate to work on an extraordinary variety of projects—VR titles (such as Summer Lesson), Pokkén Tournament, the SoulCalibur series, and many others, both inside and outside the company.”
Tekken’s latest instalment – Tekken 8 – was the first mainline game not to receive an arcade release prior to launch, due to COVID-19 and the changing landscape of the arcade scene in Japan. Tekken 8 managed to surpass 3 million copies faster than its predecessor Tekken 7.
Hilariously, Harada’s extensive engagement with the Tekken community on X (formerly Twitter) led to his famous catch phrase “Don’t ask me for shit!” when hounded by fans for not including features or characters in Tekken. While initially borne out of frustration with the fans for being rude, this became incorporated into his appearances, including wearing a shirt during Tekken Talk, and quoting it at The Game Awards when receiving an award for Tekken 8.
Harada will still appear as a special guest at the TWT World Finals in 2026. It will definitely be interesting to see where the franchise goes next without a stalwart such as Harada at the helm. You can read Harada’s annoucement in full HERE.
