Harada says Tekken X Street Fighter is a 'long term' project

Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada has explained that Tekken X Street Fighter, the long awaited pairing of Namco and Capcom's flagship fighter series, is still in the works, and that the game is a 'long term' project.

Speaking at a pre-Tokyo Game Show briefing in which Harada was promoting Tekken Revolution, the recently released free-to-play installment of the series, Harada said that work is continuing on Tekken X Street Fighter.

"We do have assets created and some of the materials," Harada told Eurogamer. "It's just that we're looking at the circumstances and what direction people are going in, what platform as there's a change in the market. I'm thinking long term about that."

Street Fighter X Tekken, the Capcom produced first episode of the pairing, suffered from poor sales. Given Namco's embracing of free-to-play, with the latest Tekken and Soul Calibur both taking up the business model, could Tekken X Street Fighter go the same way?

"I don't see that the entire genre's going to go that way," said Harada. "There are some fans that perhaps would rather buy a package and be done with it, and play as much as they like."

Tekken Revolution came out in June on PS3, and currently there's no Xbox 360 version. Microsoft's historically been reluctant to host free-to-play games, but with the arrival of World of Tanks and the announcement of Killer Instinct on Xbox One it's beginning to soften its approach. So could Tekken Revolution end up on Microsoft hardware?

"The circumstances have changed a bit," said Harada. "It seems they've opened up to that model since Xbox One, and after we released the PlayStation Network beta they were kind of nervous and expressed an interest. We don't have concrete plans, but there's a possibility that we'll do it in the future."