Taku Chihaya: It's exactly as you say, but I'm used to it by now. It's almost like a fireman saying, "oh, I don't like fires because they're too hot. I'm going to quit." This is my job!GameSpy: Will online updates and roster fixes make this easier for you?
Taku Chihaya: One of the things that was a big disappointment for us last year was that we weren't able to include John Morrison in the game. He came out with a new name, new gimmick, new everything just after our cutoff date of when we could have made changes. So we weren't able to squeeze him in, and as a result we lost a lot of currentness or up-to-dateness.
We're not going to talk about what we're going to provide over downloads as far as content, but I think you can assure your readers that there will be answers to the things they've wanted for a long time to improve our next Smackdown vs. Raw after the release of the game.
GameSpy: With each edition of the game, there are new refinements and additions to the create-a-superstar system. How close are we to getting to the technology where a character creation system will be good enough to create anyone, be it a wrestler, an actor, yourself, anyone, and do it believably?
Taku Chihaya: Very good question, very interesting. This is just getting into my dream world, as a game designer, not really an actual thing we have on the table right now. I think if we're able to use or incorporate other external devices into the hardware itself, it would be really cool. When we take reference for the superstar models that we create for the game, we do body scans and facial photo-referencing and so on. If you could get a device to hook up to your platform, that could scan yourself, or scan your face, body part, whatever, and transfer that into the game, that would really put us over the top.GameSpy: Like the Xbox Live Vision camera? Rainbow Six lets you put your face on a character model.
Taku Chihaya: Right! We're really interested in investigating new technologies for taking the information that you read off a camera and transferring it into 3D.GameSpy: Mixed martial arts competition is very popular in Japan. Are you fans of MMA, and do you anticipate a lot of crossover between wrestling and MMA in the real world and in your videogames?
Taku Chihaya: Mixed martial arts is very popular in Japan, you're right. Personally, I'm a pro wrestling fan before a mixed martial arts fan. While it may be portrayed as a negative for pro wrestling that it's scripted, there's so many things you can do in pro wrestling because it's scripted. There's a lot of drama that's played out because of that aspect that you can't quite get in a mixed martial arts match.GameSpy: I brought this up because the Undertaker's new finisher is a brazilian jiu-jitsu technique, a shin choke called the gogoplata. In the last game, you introduced ground and pound fighting. Mixed martial arts fighters like Ken Shamrock and Dan Severn have tried pro wrestling, and some of the most popular Japanese MMA fighters are also pro wrestlers. Brock Lesnar was an incredibly popular wrestler, but now he's focused on an MMA career. Do you anticipate using any techniques from MMA games to address things like missing running techniques?
Taku Chihaya: Definitely. There are two reasons why we look at including MMA style techniques in our game. The first is that the real WWE superstars have started incorporating MMA into their gimmicks and into their movesets, and we'll include those for sure. Secondly, if we can take something from MMA that would add a level of strategy to our wrestling game that wasn't there previously, we'll definitely do that.
