Ono: Capcom and Namco working separately on collaborative projects

Capcom fight-guru Yoshinori Ono has explained why Capcom and Namco are keeping their distance from one another during the development of their Street Fighter and Tekken crossover projects.

In a developer interview posted on Capcom's website, Street Fighter X Tekken producer Yoshinori Ono revealed that, outside of coordinating announcements, Capcom and Namco are keeping a respectful distance.

"We get in touch to share information prior to making an announcement, but for the most part we don’t share many of the details," Ono revealed. "We're reading the strategy guides and get some particular notes and advice about things to keep in mind, but we don’t share any of the character models or motion data. We don't even exchange any information about which characters will actually appear in the game.

"Basically, there’s no point in developing a game separately if you’re constantly getting in each person’s way. For example, if we checked the work Namco had done on Ryu, we definitely want to tweak things ourselves. The same is true for Namco. There’s no point in mutually checking each other’s work, for it would diminish the individuality of each party. It has to be 'Capcom does Tekken' and 'Namco does Street Fighter'."

Ono went on to say that although the two companies are traditionally rivals, this collaboration is about benefiting the Street Fighter and Tekken brands, not who outperforms who.

"The aim of this project is not to compare the two and get one up on the other, but to build a foundation for the next ten years of fighting games ... To me, this project represents the ideal form of collaboration."

Street Fighter X Tekken is due for release in March 2012 for PC, 360 and PS3, a launch date for Tekken X Street Fighter is yet to be confirmed.

Thanks, Joystiq.