Tekken X Street Fighter Officially Dead, Was Only ‘30 Percent Complete’

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Tekken X Street Fighter, the long in-development crossover game that was first announced in 2010, is officially dead according to Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada. Not to be confused with Street Fighter X Tekken, which was revealed at the same time and launched in 2012, Bandai Namco’s side of the crossover coin spent 11 years in development limbo with minimal updates on its status. 

For those of you saying “Well, duh,” remember that the game’s cancellation was never publicly confirmed. Harada insisted for years that the game was still happening. However, on a recent episode of Harada’s Bar, a video talk show the designer launched earlier this year where he chats with guests and answers questions from a secret bar location, the topic of Tekken X Street Fighter arose. 

“We were working really hard on that,” says Harada. He goes on to praise the “really nice” models they designed, particularly for female characters like Chun-Li, but says they independently can’t show anything they made due to Capcom owning the Street Fighter cast. 

Speaking to the game’s overall progress, Harada says, “Yeah, development stopped but we got about 30% done.” He then goes on to discuss that the team had seemingly completed motions for certain characters. Harada is particularly proud of how Dhalsim turned out. 

He then goes on to praise the game’s concept art, then laments on how it’s all been wasted. “We wanted to show it but the project died.” 

You can listen to the conversation beginning at 17:17 mark. After an intermission, the discussion resumes at 21:25. 

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Tekken X Street Fighter was meant to be the inverse of Street Fighter X Tekken in that Ryu and Co. would battle it out on Tekken’s turf in a fully 3D fighter. Both games were revealed together during the 2010 San Diego Comic Con but, for reasons still unknown even after this confirmation, Bandai Namco's end of the deal never materialized. Odds are Bandai Namco simply cut its losses when the project took too long; Harada told Video Games Chronicle in 2019 that continuing development was "harder to justify" from a logic and business standpoint despite his passion for the concept. The closest realization to that vision was Akuma’s guest spot in Tekken 7, an appearance that came to be thanks to the knowledge Bandai Namco gained while developing Tekken X Street Fighter. 

This cancellation is likely the least surprising news ever as I think many of us assumed a long time ago that Tekken X Street Fighter was never going to happen. Still, as games such as Final Fantasy XV and Duke Nukem Forever have shown, long-in-development projects can still see the light of day, so it wasn’t totally unreasonable to cling on to the hope of a surprise comeback. It's good to know that we can finally lay the myth of Tekken X Street Fighter to rest. If nothing else, at least we get the consolation prize of Kazuya coming to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. 

Were you still holding out for Tekken X Street Fighter? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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