Harada’s ‘Hopeful That Tekken x Street Fighter Will Resume Development’

In the June 5, 2021 Harada’s Bar Radio entry, some of the official English subtitles included a mistranslation. It suggested that the project died or perhaps wasn’t viable. Now, Bandai Namco’s Tekken Director and Producer Katsuhiro Harada issued a Twitlonger update that said Tekken x Street Fighter development is still pending and he’s hopeful for its future.

Here’s Harada’s full explanation, which went over how Tekken x Street Fighter hit the 30% point of development and is pending. He also mentioned his hopes that it will enter active development again.

First of all, at around 21 minutes and 25 seconds, he says "今はとめてますよ(ima tomete masuyo)" which means "It’s pending state," similar to "pause" and This is the same word we have been talking about before.

So, "up to 30% of the development was in progress, but now it is still pending". This is still the status of the project.

Next we are talking about "Artist Collaboration" starting at minute 22. This is a story about how we had a famous artist draw a certain illustration for us during the development of TK x SF (Tekken also has illustrations in collaboration with famous artists, something like that). I say "Okura-iri ni nattan dayo na" in Japanese about this illustration collaboration.

For some reason, the meaning of the word "Okura-iri" is "Project died", but the original meaning of "Okura-iri" is "be shelved" or "put in storage."

Contracts with artists and collaborators outside of development are subject to terms and conditions, including duration, so we do not own the rights to them indefinitely. So, this one has been put in storage for now.

You can see that the original Japanese and the English subtitles give a very different impression (so people who can hear Japanese are not particularly interested in this topic thing).

In any case, the status is not much different from the status I told you about before. Well, the fact that the status has not changed is not a nice thing for us and for you.

We are still hopeful that TKxSF will resume development when the opportunity arises. 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.

Tekken 7 is available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Street Fighter x Tekken is available for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and PC. (It also appeared on Apple iOS devices.)