Harada: Collaborations lead to "unneeded tension"

Tekken creator Katsuhiro Harada has said Tekken x Street Fighter and Street Fighter x Tekken exist as two discrete games to avoid inter-company clashes.

"This isn’t the first time Capcom has worked with another developer, as you know they worked with SNK," Harada told Gamernode.

"We had heard rumors that the two disagreed on a lot of things, which caused unneeded tension, and we didn’t want that. As a result, we agreed that there would be two separate games, and each one wouldn’t try to stop the other from a creative standpoint.

"If [Street Fighter designer Yoshinori] Ono asks Harada to tell him about a character, he’ll give his opinion but he won’t direct him on how Tekken characters 'should' be, and vice versa. That was one of the first things decided about the project, and so far it has gone really well."

Harada pointed out that he and Ono were the only Japanese developers to be features prominently at E3, which seems to demonstrate that "the partnership is working out so far".

In the same interview, Harada spoke a little about his prominent social media presence.

"Tekken’s been around for 16 years now, and when I was working on the first one, the Internet itself wasn’t even big yet. The only way for fans to gather information was through TV or magazines or newspapers, and their voices were never directly able to reach the developers who make the games," he explained.

" ... Since the introduction of the Internet and social media, we’ve seen a change in players, especially around Tekken 5 and 6, that are a lot younger than they used to be and don’t care as much about trends as they used to. They use the Internet to gather information about what they’re interested in and not much else.

"I feel that putting our game out in the conventional way might not really convey everything we want from a creator’s standpoint. By using Twitter and some of the other tools, we have a way to tell these people exactly what we’re making and how it’s being done, as well as have the fans be able to directly tell us what they want, which is a unique opportunity."

Harada's half of the Street Fighter and Tekken crossover, Tekken x Street Fighter, is expected at the end of 2012. Ono's offering, Street Fighter x Tekken, is due in early 2012.

Thanks, GoNintendo.