Remember the long-anticipated Tekken X Street Fighter, a crossover fighting game by Bandai Namco featuring Tekken and Street Fighter characters with Tekken-like gameplay (as oppose to Street Fighter X Tekken, released in 2012 with Street Fighter-like gameplay)? Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing it anytime soon.
In an interview with Gamespot, Tekken games director Katsuhiro Harada mentioned that the project is on hold due to the huge fighting game releases. Street Fighter V is already making a big impression in the community (but not so much to mainstream audience) and the console release of Tekken 7, Tekken 7 Fated Retribution is coming soon. He believes it is not wise to split up the community with too many fighting games.
In his words:
“That’s a difficult question to answer. 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. 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 for Tekken 7.
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.”
This is actually not that shocking. Consider also that Street Fighter X Tekken didn’t do well both commercially and critically- the gems system was something the community don’t clearly like and the horrible practice of “on-disc DLC” first appeared in this very title. There’s a lot at stake to get Tekken X Street Fighter to a level that fans are expecting. Focusing on getting the Tekken 7 shipped to consoles and support it seems to be a wise call, but it will surely hurt some fans who have been waiting for that cross-over to happen.
But hey, at least we will get Akuma in Tekken 7. So that’s a nice consolation prize.