Tekken x Street Fighter no longer in active development
Katsuhiro Harada explains why Bandai Namco may have missed its moment on the crossover.
Tekken X Street Fighter is no longer in active development, Bandai Namco has revealed. Speaking in an interview with GameSpot, Tekken game director Katsuhiro Harada indicated that releasing the crossover fighting game now could fracture the audiences of both franchises.
"When we develop fighting games, we try to keep the core community in mind as well as the wider audience that wants to play these games," he explained. "But currently the situation is with fighting games, you have Street Fighter V that just released -- a lot of people are playing that fervently -- and there's a large crowd out there waiting or Tekken 7."
He continued: "We don't want to split these communities, so a good window in which to release Tekken x Street Fighter is something that's become difficult recently. So it's on hold for the moment."
Tekken x Street Fighter was first announced during San Diego Comic-Con 2010 as a partnership between Bandai Namco and Capcom. As part of the arrangement, both companies would have access to each other's iconic cast of fighting game characters for use in two new fighting games.
Capcom's game Street Fighter x Tekken was released in 2012, but Bandai Namco had shown very little of its project in years following. Despite this, Harada previously maintained that he work was ongoing. In August 2013, he said it was "still in development" and explained the "several reasons" for why there hadn't been updates on its project, after Capcom's release.
"One of the reasons is, Street Fighter x Tekken was released," he said. "That still had updates until recently. One interesting thing we've seen with that title when it came out was that it's not quite what we expected.
Harada said Bandai Namco was still looking for "the right time" to release Tekken x Street Fighter.
He affirmed that the game was still in development again July 2013: "It might seem like we haven't started on it at all, but the character lineup has been decided upon since a very long time ago. And we've already finished the polygon models, moves, and systems."
This marks the first instance of Harada admitting the game is no longer an active project at Bandai Namco. The publisher recently released Pokken Tournament, in partnership with Nintendo and The Pokemon company. Its next major fighting game is Tekken 7, which is set for release on PlayStation 4.
You can watch GameSpot's full interview with Harada in the video above.