Fighters are "chess pieces," says Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada and as such, they are absolutely essential.
And that's why Namco won't be charging for any new fighters they choose to add to Tekken Tag Tournament 2 via downloadable content. His comments come after the gaming world discovered a dozen locked characters on the Street Fighter X Tekken disc, which immediately prompted outrage that players would be charged at a later date. But Tekken has never charged for DLC before and they're not going to start now, as Harada told Edge :
"Tekken has never had DLC before and charged for it. 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."
Harada made an effort to explain why he believed Capcom did what they did, saying that if one player bought a character that another player didn't have, they would not be able to play against each other online. It's a rational thought and quite diplomatic, although it probably won't appease the angered fans. Added Harada:
"Each player needs to have the character data on their disc – if one doesn’t, they would need to download it before each match – and as that includes the character model, the data would be large, increasing the download time. I also wonder if it’s because the game has characters which are Vita-specific, and they wanted to make it so that owners would be able to use them on PS3 as well."
Capcom said the 12 fighters were on the disc "to save hard drive space, and to ensure a smooth transition when DLC is available." But the point is, you don't have to expect to pay for extra fighters in TTT2. That's the prime point to take away from this. However, that being said, Harada did say paid DLC wasn't entirely out of the question.
"There are some strange people on Twitter who ask for really peculiar items like bikini suits for Lee Chaolan. Obviously, we wouldn’t have had that in our original development plan, so if we were going to do it, we’d need to create it right now, without a budget – obviously we’d have to charge a little bit for such items."
Related Game(s): Tekken Tag Tournament 2
