Bandai Namco has officially announced Tekken 7, the next addition to its popular and long running fighting series. Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada reportedly made the reveal live at the EVO 2014 fighting game tournament event. Via Polygon:

"The Tekken franchise is beloved and we couldn't be more excited to be working with the talented team at Bandai Namco," Taka Kawasaki, studio head at Epic Games Japan, said in a prepared statement. "This marriage is perfect — the most powerful engine in gaming along with one of the most enduring brands in fighting games. We have no doubt that these forces coming together will yield fantastic results."

"The power and flexibility means that we can focus our efforts on making Tekken 7 the best possible game without worrying about spending time creating a stand-alone graphic engine," said Katsuhiro Harada, Tekken series executive producer/game director at Bandai Namco, in a prepared statement. "With Unreal Engine 4, we could rapidly achieve visual quality expected on next-gen platform and go beyond it. Not only is Unreal Engine 4 powerful and easy to use, but it allows us to immediately bring Tekken 7 to any platform we desire."

Peculiarly, it seems that Tekken 7 wasn't the game that Harada-san had intended to reveal today, but moved the announcement forward after a leaked image appeared a few hours earlier.

VG247 notes that Harada has previously said he is working on multiple new projects, with another of those was intended to revealed instead, and explains that Harada-san supposedly hastily prepared the Tekken 7 trailer in his hotel room. Watch that one below.

Further details on Tekken 7 have been promised on July 25th at San Diego Comic Con.