Did a producer for the Dragon Ball Z series of games let word slip on the next installment of the weapons-based fighting series?

Source: An interview with Dragon Ball Z series producer Daisuke Uchiyama over at GameDaily.

The official story: Namco representatives had not responded to requests for comment as of press time.

The GameDaily interview moves along a lot like any interview would for a number of paraphrased questions and answers before the issue of Soul Calibur is brought up. The writer mentions that Tekken and Soul Calibur publisher Namco has merged with Dragon Ball Z's Japanese publisher Bandai (Atari publishes the series in the US), and asks Uchiyama about the possibility of a future Dragon Ball Z game developed by one of the teams behind Namco's fighting franchises.

The article gives the producer's response: "Uchiyama laughed and said that ideally that would be the scenario, but by the time the merger was finalized a new Tekken (Tekken 6) and Soul Calibur (Soul Calibur IV confirmed!) were already in the works, so it was not possible."

Because it's a paraphrased response in an almost certainly translated interview, it's impossible to parse words here and see if there might have been some misunderstanding on either Uchiyama's part or the writer's. In any case, it just says that a new Soul Calibur was taking up the development team's time when the Bandai-Namco merger was finalized. Uchiyama doesn't appear to mention Soul Calibur IV by name, so the new game could be a PSP version of an existing Soul Calibur game, or maybe even a project that was already known about.

The Bandai-Namco merger was finalized in September. Soul Calibur III was released in October, so there's even a slight chance Uchiyama was referring to that game as the incomplete Soul Calibur project in question. However, that seems unlikely, given how close to completion the game already was.

However, the producer's comment also could have been in reference to the arcade version of Soul Calibur III, which wasn't released in Japan until April and included a number of tweaks to the game. In addition to a legend mode where created characters can become a boss character for others to fight against, the arcade version featured compatibility with a cell phone game called Mobile Conquest. The Soul Calibur team could well have been busy balancing the game and adding those extra features for a couple months, pushing the team's schedule out of sync with the Dragon Ball Z project's development.

It's entirely probable--perhaps even inevitable--that a Soul Calibur IV will be made sooner or later. And it's certainly possible that Uchiyama was in fact talking about Soul Calibur IV specifically when he explained why future Dragon Ball Z games wouldn't be developed by the same team. But given the article's own account of the interview, it seems premature to conclude that Uchiyama was talking about Soul Calibur IV.

Bogus that Soul Calibur IV has been confirmed. Not bogus that it will happen eventually.

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