'Tekken X Street Fighter' Isn't Dead Yet, 40-Strong Team Working On It

Fans of the fighting genre have a reason to celebrate. The long-awaited game "Tekken X Street Fighter" is still under development. The game was written off as vapourware by the community as it seemed to be in development for an inordinately long period of time. However, Namco Bandai producer Katsuhiro Harada has stepped in to dispel this notion.

In an interview with Polygon, he revealed that a small team within Namco Bandai has been working on the game after being quizzed about the uncertainty of the game's release. Harada cited the saturation of the fighting game space as the prime reason for the game's delay. However, he reassured that the game is very much in the pipeline.

In fact, a total of 40 developers have been dedicated to the project, but on further probing Harada refused to divulge on the specifics. He was especially unwilling to commit to any release date. Even the interviewer's enquiry about the possibility of a two-year window didn't elicit a confirmation. His concern seemed to lie wit the timing. According to the producer, the market has too many fighting games in the meantime. And his wish for "Tekken X Street Fighter" is to give it a fresh spin when it's finally released.

"Obviously, I had originally planned to release it much earlier than we’re currently looking at," said Harada to Polygon. "People have been talking about the game for such a long time that they aren’t going to be surprised if you just release it normally."

MCV UK reports that the Namco Bandai hasn't announced any platforms for the game either. Considering the fact that the game has been in development since the last generation of consoles, it may need to make significant changes to the very foundation of the game engine for it to be worthy of current generation of consoles.

At any rate, a possible game engine shift mid-development is a textbook example of a game being stuck in "development hell." That's probably why Harada signed off by stating that "Tekken 7" will continue to be Namco Bandai's "big thing" for the near future.