Ultra Street Fighter 4’s new combatants also appeared in Street Fighter x Tekken, but Capcom’s producer Tomoaki Ayano has assured VG247 that they aren’t just simple character rips.

You may recall that Elena, Rolento, Hugo and Poison also appeared in Street Fighter x Tekken last year, and now they’re being added to the Super Street Fighter 4 roster along with a fifth, unannounced character.

If you missed the Ultra announcement and character trailer, you can check it out here.

Speaking with Ayano as part of an interview you can read here soon, I asked – given past issues of Street Fighter x Tekken DLC characters being on the disc – to address fan concerns that the Ultra Street Fighter 4 newcomers are simply being transferred across from the cross-over.

“Users do not need to worry,” he replied, “because the new characters will definitely not just be copy and pasted from Street Fighter X Tekken. If we did that, 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. 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.”

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He added that the purpose of the Ultra update is to further improve the game’s balancing to give each fighter tournament potential and to keep interest in Street Fighter 4 rolling on. He also said given the amount of time it takes to produce each core entry to the series, we could be waiting a long time for Street Fighter 5 to drop.

“Game development is a long and arduous process,” he continued. “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. Purely based on that it would probably take us until the year 2018 before Street Fighter V comes out [laughs]. So I hope everyone will play Ultra Street Fighter IV for a long time.”

Can you wait that long? Let us know below.