Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada laments the cancellation of Tekken X Street Fighter
UPDATE: Harada now says TKxSF "is still pending".
UPDATE 22ND JUNE 2021: Tekken development chief Katsuhiro Harada has clarified comments made on his YouTube series about the status of Tekken X Street Fighter, insisting the English subtitles failed to properly translate the intended meaning behind the Japanese.
Rather than being cancelled outright, Tekken x Street Fighter is in a "pending state," similar to "pause", Harada said in a tweet. So, the intended meaning is: "up to 30 percent of the development was in progress, but now it is still pending". "This is still the status of the project," Harada now says.
"We are still hopeful that TKxSF will resume development when the opportunity arises," Harada continues. "However, such a title cannot be moved just for the convenience of one company in terms of marketing and branding, and it also affects each other's development resources.
"For now, we are just waiting for the right opportunity."
ORIGINAL STORY 21ST JUNE 2021: Tekken X Street Fighter was "about 30 percent done" when it was cancelled.
Speaking on his YouTube series Harada's Bar, Tekken development chief Katsuhiro Harada discussed the ill-fated project, which was announced 11 years ago in July 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Tekken X Street Fighter was a much-hyped crossover fighting game in development at Bandai Namco in collaboration with Street Fighter maker Capcom. It was meant to follow 2D fighting game Street Fighter X Tekken by mashing together characters from both series, this time in the 3D Tekken style.
Fans have considered the game cancelled for some time now, despite no official rubber stamp from Bandai Namco. Harada, though, put the project to bed with his latest comments.
"We were working really hard on that," he said.
"We had really nice models. I really wanted to show them Chun-Li. We were pretty confident.
"We wish we could show you them eventually, but Street Fighter belongs to Capcom so we can't do it on our own.
"Development stopped but we got about 30 percent done. We even had motions, which you can see reflected in Akuma.
"The developing experience was useful. Animation making too.
"Dhalsim turned out as well as we expected, pretty good.
"I was pretty confident."
Harada then bemoans the "wasted concept art", saying: "We wanted to show it but the project died."
That's that, then. Tekken X Street Fighter is officially dead. Harada didn't go into why the game was cancelled, but in 2016 he said neither developer wanted to split the communities behind 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," Harada told Gamespot at the time.
"But currently the situation is with fighting games, you have Street Fighter 5 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."
Then, in 2019, Harada told VGC Tekken X Street Fighter had become "harder to justify" with Tekken 7 doing so well.
What's next? Bandai Namco is expected to be working on Tekken 8 after the success of Tekken 7. Similarly, Capcom is expected to be working on Street Fighter 6 as a follow-up to Street Fighter 5.
Perhaps Akuma as a guest character in Tekken 7 is as close as we'll get to seeing Tekken x Street Fighter.