Six years on, development of Tekken X Street Fighter is 'on hold'

Bandai Namco's Katsuhiro Harada has confirmed in a recent conversation with GameSpot that development of the fighting game Tekken X Street Fighter is "on hold" for the moment.

What's most surprising here is that Tekken X Street Fighter is still acknowledged as being in development; Bandai Namco announced the game six years ago in cooperation with Capcom, who simultaneously announced it would create its own Street Fighter X Tekken game. 

The two games were slated to play very differently (Capcom's game would be more like Street Fighter, Bandai Namco's game more like Tekken) and sure enough, in 2012 Capcom released Street Fighter X Tekken to less-than-stellar sales.

At the time, Capcom blamed the game's underwhelming performance on the market for fighting games, which it said at the time was glutted with "the large number of other games in this genre that were launched within a short time." Now, four years later, Harada says Bandai Namco is holding off on Tekken X Street Fighter for much the same reason.

"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 told GameSpot. "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."

For more of his comments on the project, as well as some insight into how becoming a father has changed the way he approaches game development (and manages his fellow employees), check out the full GameSpot interview.