Katsuhiro Harada has told Edge Magazine that his games will never offer paid-for character downloads; he revealed that Namco would not place DLC characters on the Tekken X Street Fighter disc.
Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada will reportedly never charge consumers for character DLC in any of his games.
Speaking to Edge, Harada referenced the recent decision by Capcom to ship Street Fighter X Tekken with on-disc DLC: 12 downloadable characters that the publishers plan to start selling to consumers “soon after” the PS Vita version launch, which is currently scheduled for this spring.
Harada confirmed to Edge that Namco would not be doing the same with its own crossover title, Tekken X Street Fighter.
“Tekken has never had DLC before and charged for it,” Harada told Edge during Namco’s Global Gamer Day in Las Vegas last week. “This isn’t really directed at Capcom. I have always said this, but I see the characters and their move sets as chess pieces–they are essential items necessary in the game, and we would never sell any of those individually.”
“It’s Capcom’s business decision, obviously, but I expect the reason they did that was if one player bought a character that another player didn’t have, they would not be able to play against each other online.”
When it revealed its decision to include on-disc DLC on Street Fighter X Tekken, Capcom said the move was made to save hard drive space, and to ensure a smooth transition when the DLC becomes available. However, not everyone saw it that way–last month, hackers managed to unlock the Street Fighter X Tekken DLC fighters, prompting producer Tomoaki Ayano to express his disappointment at the situation.
In his interview with Edge, Harada did not rule out paid DLC in the Tekken series for things like vanity items, but reiterated that players should never be made to pay for characters.
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