No Street Fighter V until 2018 - Capcom producer

It looks like fans wanting a fifth Street Fighter game will have quite a while to wait.

Capcom producer Tomoaki Ayano said in a VG247 interview that it will take the company until the year 2018 for Street Fighter V. "Game development is a long and arduous process. If you look at the history of the series, it took six years to go from Street Fighter II to Street Fighter III, and nine years to go from Street Fighter III to Street Fighter IV," he said.

He added in the interview that the new Ultra Street Fighter IV characters--Elena, Rolento, Hugo, and Poison--are not simple character rips from Street Fighter X Tekken. "If we [copied and pasted them from SF x Tekken], they would undoubtedly be the strongest characters in the game. The reason for this is down to the difference in gameplay systems, most notably Boost Combos," he said.

"Boost Combos formed the basis of the battle system in Street Fighter X Tekken and do not exist in Street Fighter IV. Besides adjusting the characters for a game engine without Boost Combos, each will need to have many moves added as well, such as Ultra Combos and Super Combos.A simple rip wouldn't allow us to make the necessary changes, so a lot of work is going on behind the scenes."