Tekken 8 Closed Network Test Announced

Beyond all of the showcases and conferences that we’re in the midst of, fighting game fans have their hands full between Street Fighter 6 and the recent gameplay reveals for Mortal Kombat 1. The genre’s third-biggest franchise won’t be missing in action for too long though. While Tekken 8 didn’t show up at any events, a new trailer released for it on Friday with the exciting news about a closed network test (CNT). It also had a sneaky reveal of another returning character with Claudio.

The CNT is being held across two weekends, with the first phase running from July 21st to July 24th and the second phase running from July 28th to July 31st. How soon you get to play does depend on which platform you use though, as the first weekend will be exclusively available on PlayStation 5. The second weekend will open it up to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. Naturally, crossplay will also be functional across the second weekend so that everyone can play together.

16 characters will be playable and five stages are set to be available to choose from. Prior to this trailer, we had only seen 15 characters revealed, but a short snippet at the end confirmed that Claudio would be returning. No gameplay has been shown of him just yet, so there’s no telling how similar he’ll play compared to his debut in Tekken 7.

Players have until June 27th to register for the CNT. The only mode mentioned is a Ranked mode featuring 10 ranks to work up to, which likely means that there won’t be any training modes. This isn’t the most surprising, considering this is meant to test their network as much as it’s meant to let people try it out. Some notable gameplay changes are also being made for this test, such as the removal of Heat Energy and changes to the Heat Timer. We’ll have to wait until next month to see how these changes affect everything.