For a while now, we've been hearing that developer Dimps, not Capcom, was doing the heavy lifting for Street Fighter IV. The Osaka-based Dimps is best known for the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai games and Rumble Fish. The company was founded by former employees of two other Osaka game companies, Capcom and SNK. SFIV producer Yoshinori Ono addresses the issue in an interview with game site 1up, which we believe is the first time for Capcom to do so:
Well, it wasn't that we were necessarily hiding that fact, but it's that we didn't really view them as an external developer in the traditional sense. Takashi Nishiyama, the guy who started Dimps and still runs the studio, used to work at Capcom years ago, and he was actually one of the developers on the original Street Fighter. After he did that game, he left Capcom and set up that studio. He still totally has Capcom blood in him, though, and we still view him as one of the team. The same goes for some of the others there. In fact, Nishiyama was one of the guys who helped make the Street Fighter 4 project happen. So the way it works is that we handle all of the art, characters, and game design within Capcom, and they handle the programming and balancing. But it really is a true Capcom game through and through, no matter how you look at it. ...Street Fighter is entirely our property, so we have all the say and can control its quality. It's all in our and their hands to make a really great game. It really does feel like we're working with people from within the family — again, a lot of these guys used to work at Capcom — and it doesn't hurt that they're only a quick 20 minute train ride away.
Yeah, the Capcom and Dimps offices are fairly close, so that takes care of those concerns. They're both in the same city, no biggie. Though, we've heard chatter that producer Ono is not — rumor has it that he's based at Capcom's Tokyo branch office and not in Osaka, where the game's being developed by Dimps. If that's true, why? (Know: However the hell Capcom made SFIV, it did a solid job — the arcade version is great.) Street Fighter 4 Producer Talks Wii, Dimps, and Sheng Long [1up]