Back in 2010, the world was given a glimpse of the future of fighting games when "Street Fighter IV" producer Yoshinori Ono and "Tekken" producer Katsuhiro Harada announced the combination of two of the world's biggest fighting game franchises- "Street Fighter" and "Tekken," confirming that both franchises would be going head-to-head in two separate games- "Street Fighter x Tekken" and "Tekken x Street Fighter."
Both games would have characters from each franchise duking it out, but each would be implemented differently. Whereas "Street Fighter x Tekken" would have the action take place on a 2-D plane, "Tekken x Street Fighter" would have the action take place on a 3-D plane. The former came out in 2012, but the latter has been noticeably absent, leaving fans to wonder what the status of the game is.
Rather, that was the case, until now.
In an interview discussing "Tekken 7's" development, how Bandai Namco is planning on addressing rage quitting, if Harada has ever been mistaken for Ono and other subjects, the discussion soon turned to "Tekken x Street Fighter," with Harada revealing that the game is no longer in active development due to fears that releasing the 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."
While this is the first time that Harada has outright confirmed that the game isn't in development, this isn't the first time he alluded to the development team having difficulty with finding a time to release the title. He confirmed as much at least once in the past when he revealed that the game's character lineup, models and system were already complete. The only thing that the development team worried about at the time was the upcoming release of "Street Fighter V" and "Tekken 7."
"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," he said in July 2015.
Even with "Tekken x Street Fighter" on hold, it isn't like Bandai Namco hasn't been hard at work on the fighting game front. It recently released "Pokken Tournament" on the Wii U, and "Tekken 7" is coming out eventually on the arcade for PS4. When it eventually comes, fans will be able to have a taste of how "Street Fighter" characters handle on "Tekken's" engine, as Akuma from "Street Fighter" will be playable as a guest character.
Check out a Akuma in action below:
