Yoshinori Ono's panel interview at the Fan Expo in Toronto turned up some interesting bits, which PKT gracious wrote out for fans hoping for a quick summary. Here's the skinny.
Q: Are Street Fighter 4 balance patches planned, now that XBLA/PSN can do stuff like that?
A: They released the Championship Mode patch in Spring, and that was basically the extent of their development budget. So, it'll become a possibility if/when they'll get some more money. The requests for patches have reached Capcom USA, though, and he's confident that they'll open their vault.
Q: Why didn't they use the superior GGPO as their netcode?
A: Capcom folks looked at it, considered it too [translator looks puzzled at this part] process intensive, decided not to use it.
Q: How come Dee Jay and T.Hawk got kicked out?
A: He says that's a question that's very difficult to answer... at this point in time. Basically, Street Fighter 4 was supposed to be like a big get-together, and their invitation letters got lost in the mail.
Q: How do they come up with original moves for the characters?
A: They take the lowest ranking staff members and beat them to a pulp. Whatever hurts the most, goes in the game.
Q: What would Ono like to do in the next iteration of SF4?
A: He'd like to bring back some Street Fighter 3 characters. But before that, he'll need some funding, so if anyone happens to be an elite safecracker, let him know.
Transcriber's note: How confident is he about Capcom USA opening their vault, exactly?
Q: Was there a time he doubted that they could surpass Street Fighter 3?
A: They weren't explicitly trying to do that, they simply intended to bring back the old Street Fighter 2/Alpha players.
Q: Favorite Street Fighter game/character?
A: SF2 Dash/Championship Edition. Because it turned out you could actually beat Bison (Dictator) with Honda. Most played character is Ryu, favorite is Dhalsim.
• They were working on SF Alpha, and the management figured that it'd need to be released on CPS1 instead of the previously planned CPS2. They had two months for the transition. Super happy crunch time ensues, they didn't even get to go home for that two months. "What sort of dream team is this?!," he wondered.
• Later he got to work on Street Fighter 3, a game which was intended to be the ultimate SF game - in terms of graphics, sound, balance. The game comes out, fans love it, so Capcom figures they really did make the ultimate Street Fighter. Which is also why they saw a sequel as pointless, because you can't improve on perfection.
• More fan support for Street Fighter 4 would be nice, because 66% of Capcom is still against the idea of continuing with the series.
• What does a lead producer do? Ensure the game makes money. He considers himself more of a game creator, though, so his approach is to create games people love and will want to play for a long time. If you think that changed and he's purely in it for the money, send your hatemail to Capcom USA, as he's sure that it'll be the evil managers there that will convert him to the dark side.
If you want to watch this videos for yourself, you can view part 1 here and find links to the subsequent videos on Gooooooomba's YouTube page.
