Tekken 6’s director Katsuhiro Harada has revealed Europe and the US were a big influence in the decision to make the long-running beat-‘em-up series a multiformat proposition.

“At the moment we have two high spec consoles on the market at the same time; the Xbox has a huge installed base in Europe and America,” Harada told Kikizo. “So it was more about trying to answer the fans’ requests and having as many as possible be able to get the game – that was the objective there.”

The franchise has previously been exclusive to PlayStation consoles until it was announced at this year’s TGS that Tekken 6 would also be available for both Xbox 360 and PS3.

“We have developed it PlayStation 1, 2 and now 3, so it is true that we have really grown with the PlayStation brand – we love the platform,” Harada said. “But rather than some fans feeling disappointed, there are a lot of Xbox users out there at the moment, and a great deal of fans who only have an Xbox and really want to play Tekken.

“And we just had so many fans that said ‘we really want to get our hands on it, but can’t’. So we wanted to answer those fans. We have a very large installed fan base – it’s sold 32 million copies worldwide – it’s probably the leading series in the genre.”

Tekken 6 is due to release in autumn 2009.