Check Out Tekken Street X Fighter

Anytime two massive companies team up, you can expect an armada of lawyers and endless conditions that must appease both parties. Consider Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where both Warner Bros and Disney negotiated screentime for Bugs and Mickey down to the second. You'd think Capcom and Namco would have undergone similar discussions when it came time to mix up their hottest properties, but it turns out part of the deal is that Namco can't butt in at all.

During a recent hands-on at this month's Captivate event, I asked producer Yoshinori Ono what the day-to-day experience was like working on SFxT, if there was a constant back-and-forth between Capcom and Namco. His response:

“This will come as a shock no doubt, but the way the deal was structured, they have no say in what we make and we have no say in what they’re making. You guys probably have more information at this moment than Namco. They’ll find out a lot of this information, what characters are in it and stuff when the embargo lifts like everyone else. In fact, they haven’t touched the playable and you have, so you’ve got that advantage as well.”

So it's not just Namco who's shut out - Capcom similarly cannot dictate the upcoming Tekken x Street Fighter, which places the SF fighters in a Tekken-like 3D arena. Kind of amazing, huh? We assumed both teams would have constant communication with each other, giving feedback or criticism or saying "that's not Tekken enough!" on a daily basis. It's an interesting method, one that'll definitely make each game feel like a product of its developmer; that is to say, SFxT will feel decidedly "Capcom" while TxSF will veer much more towards a "Namco" style. Even with this quote though, we have to assume there's some degree of communication between companies, right?

I'm still not completely sure about this... How will it work? Will the SF characters be able to use fireballs? Can the Tekken side walk back and forth through the foreround? I'm skeptical about this, just because SF is so much faster then Tekken... I'm worried that the SF toons will get slowed down, and the tekken side will get sped up... Turning it into a game that's not quite as good as the parts. Eh, my personal opinion of course.

I quite like this in concept, especially as there are going to be two different games. So this should help ensure they don't end up too similar.

This sounds absolutely amazing. I think both games will be accessible to both sides, and thus MAYBE finally get me into the Tekken series which I've been bleh about since 2.

SNK vs was a clear SNK game with Capcom characters in and vice-versa. Makes sense as devoted fans of both are happy with at least one title with their preferred dev's original mechanics and both houses get to sell 2 games out of the same deal, each with their own artistic freedom without anyone's development toes getting stepped upon.

No, duh! Capcom characters have been dominating in all of the promo videos released. Like Capcom will make Tekken characters look like they have a chance against them.

My money's on the Capcom one being better. I can't imagine it'll be easy to deal with the SF moves. All their moves were designed to be of best use in a 2D environment so Namco will have to do quite a bit of tweaking to have the SF characters balanced properly.

I've always preferred SF over Tekken anyway, so I'm sure I'll be happy with whatever Capcom does with this game. I still like Tekken though, so I'll surely check out Tekken X Street Fighter too.