In an interview released to VGC, Kazuhiro Harada, Tekken’s producer, has offered some more details about Tekken x Street Fighter and chances that the game could reach the stores sooner or later.
In an interview released to VGC, Kazuhiro Harada, Tekken’s producer, has offered some more details about Tekken x Street Fighter and chances that the game could reach the stores sooner or later.
As he told the website, the project was started in 2012, the same year Street Fighter x Tekken was launched, and by that year 30% of it was complete. The project was put on hold briefly after that, as announced in 2016.
“We started the project back in 2012, and the real interesting question then was, what is going to happen when the Tekken team designs characters for Street Fighter? We started creating 3D models, and I really liked them – they looked super cool – and the project progressed to about 30% completion,” Harada said.
“However, when we were ready to progress further with the project, Capcom released Street Fighter V and then we released Tekken 7. Those titles are some of the best fighting games ever and they became very successful.
“So then I started to wonder, do I really want to attempt to compete with these huge titles? It could end up splitting the community. That was a serious consideration from the marketing perspective. So I decided to hold off releasing the game for one or two years. Following that, Tekken 7 is now doing very well as a service game.”
The producer hinted at the plan being to release Tekken 7 and then go for Tekken x Street Fighter, but with the former becoming so successful even after the release, with a DLC schedule that has been very appreciated, it became more and more difficult.
Anyway, he added that he “still want to release the game,” but he needs the project to be approved again and “to speak to Capcom again as well — they may say ‘no’ now.”
So, even with him wanting to work one more time on the project, it could not get the green light from the Japanese headquarters. That could not be a big issue, but the makers of Street Fighter could block the crossover at this stage, and it could never see the light of day.
That would be quite sad, but it’s also safe to state that it was Bandai Namco to waste this opportunity, so Capcom could be right in blocking them now that they have started something completely different.
