40 people working on Tekken X Street Fighter

Tekken X Street Fighter is still in development, with about 40 staff at Bandai Namco toiling away on it, Tekken series director Katushiro Harada told Polygon.

“It’s very difficult to talk about,” Harada said. “Obviously, I had originally planned to release it much earlier than we’re currently looking at.”

According to the director, the game was delayed not because of development trouble, but because other fighting games had saturated the market.

And while Tekken X Street Fighter is indeed in development, Tekken 7 will remain Bandai Namco’s current focus.

“Tekken 7 will be our big thing for the next while,” Harada said.

Harada wouldn’t commit when asked if Tekken X Street Fighter will be released within the next two years. But when it does resurface, he wants it to surprise people.

“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,” Harada said.

Harada recalls the release of Tekken Revolution, the free-to-play PlayStation 3 game which was released a week after it was announced.

“I don’t know if that’s what we have planned, but we do plan to have some kind of surprise,” Harda said.

Outside of Tekken X Street Fighter, Harada also mentioned wanting to develop a traditional fighting game that contains characters from every fighting game franchise popular in the 80s and 90s, “or maybe even toward the 2000s.” He adds that, given the Japanese game industry’s current state, probably only Capcom or Bandai Namco would be able to pull that off.

Read more about Harada’s current projects at Polygon.