Capcom sees bright, purely '2.5D' future for its fighting games

With the Wii-exclusive Tatsunoko vs. Capcom dropping next week and Super Street Fighter IV on the horizon, Capcom sees fighting games as a focus for the company going forward. "For us, internally, fighting games are where it's at recently," we were told by Tatsunoko vs. Capcom producer Ryota Niitsuma, who added that, "as a company, we'd like to keep making more of them because that's what we do and we do it well, and I think there's a future there for that."

Although the company has produced a variety of 2D and 3D fighters in the past, Niitsuma pointed toward the likes of Street Fighter IV as a blueprint for its future fighting games. "I think we excel at making 2D fighting games. I think we have the knowledge and the know-how and the experience to make successful games in that style," he told us, explaining that, "right now, you see that we're trying to move away from straight-up traditional 2D fighting into what I guess you'd call '2.5D,' where you take the 3D fighter models and marry them to a 2D fighting plane. For now, that's the way we're going to go."

Capcom still intends to test new ideas in that space between 2D and 3D, though. "There are all these things we can do ... you take the camera and move it around," Niitsuma said, gesturing with both hands to illustrate an in-game camera orbiting the fighters. "It's still a 2D fighting field, but the camera moves in a 3D space. That's just one possibility of something we'd like to be able to do."