S: What can you tell us about these new characters? Are they going to be split evenly between the Tatsunoko and Capcom sides?
RN: In the end we want to have a good balance between the Tatsunoko side and the Capcom side, a split down the middle with characters on both sides. We're still working on which characters to add and ones to put in so I can't give you any specifics on that.
RN: Right now I'm looking at around three to four, maybe more. Nothing has been finalized yet. We will be making an announcement very soon about how many characters and who they are.
S: How is the online play system shaping up?
RN: We wanted to make this game so you can play it over a network and have leaderboards. The main thing is the Wii itself isn't suited to that. It isn't optimized for playing online. We're working right now to polish it so there aren't any problems with lag when playing online.
S: Will the online mode support Wii Speak?
RN: I can't say for sure at the end how it's going to turn out, but right now it does not support Wii Speak. We're still in the development process so in the end it could.
S: If you decided to make a sequel would it be for the Wii or one of the HD consoles?
RN: First, we have to see how this game does then we can consider what we want to do next. As far as I'm considered the HD systems have Street Fighter IV. What does the Wii have? The Wii has this. We wanted to make a fighting game for the Wii.
If we're talking about a sequel we first have to talk about success of this game. If it does well we can probably make a sequel. But, if people are going to invest in this game, like we want them to, they're going to go out and buy arcade sticks. It would be a disservice to fans to just put out this one game that they buy sticks for and then they have nothing more to play. Since this one is for the Wii, maybe the sequel will also be on the Wii.
But, we have to look at market conditions to make a final decision about that. As the way I'm seeing it now, the sequels will be on the Wii as well.