Bad news today for fans looking forward to the release of Tekken X Street Fighter, as developer and designer Katsuhiro Harada described the project as still in development, but becoming "harder to justify" as time goes by.
The project was always intended to be a two-game collaboration, with Street Fighter X Tekken releasing to mixed reviews in 2012. With the continuing success of Tekken 7, now in its ninth DLC pack, the question has largely been one of if the game is worth completing, nearly nine years after first being announced.
For years now after the release of the first game, Bandai Namco has released almost nothing new on the second part of the project, despite stating that it was still being actively developed, until 2016 when it was halted and the work put on hold. The main issue, Harada goes on to describe, is the real possibility of creating a competitor to the successful Tekken franchise, which would have the dual effect of cannibalizing sales and and possibly splitting the community of players, which ultimately may hurt the business side of the company.
For those unfamiliar with the objective of the two-game collaboration, the idea was to transport playable characters from one universe into the fighting game style of the other. In Street Fighter X Tekken, this meant that all of the Tekken characters lost their usual 3D models in favor of the 2D gameplay of the Street Fighter series. The second part would then bring all of the characters back to the fighting style of Tekken, which is problematic because of how successful Tekken 7 has been so long after its launch. At this point, it would almost make more sense to add characters from Street Fighter as DLC to Tekken 7, alongside Akuma. This would not be nearly as comprehensive a roster as the original collaboration set out to create, but given the state of things, that may be the most one could hope for.
In addition, there is the often-discussed problems and critiques of the first game, which were many. Console exclusives (Kuro, Toro, Pac-Man, a Mega Man clone, and Cole) frustrated players, Gems and Gem DLC felt predatory, the DLC character pack felt odd and out of place, and the updates to fix significant game issues came out long after the community gave up on the game in frustration.
It may be that the game is dead, but on the upside, that is primarily because of the resounding success of both Tekken 7 and Street Fighter V. It is in every sense of the phrase, a first-world problem to have.