Vita Street Fighter X Tekken will share DLC with PS3 version, may have tiny arcade stick

Given recent Capcom fighters, it should come as no surprise that Street Fighter X Tekken will have DLC. Producer Yoshinori Ono told Joystiq today, "Post-launch for an allotted period of time there will be free DLC and paid DLC, and it will keep going for a while."

But that's not the cool part. Capcom is also planning to make the DLC cross-compatible between the PS3 and PlayStation Vita versions. "With the PS3 and the Vita," Ono said, "yes, they're different hardware, but they're part of the same Playstation family, so to speak, so we're already talking with Sony about ways to sync things together. As long as you're using the same PSN account, things you've purchased on the Vita version will work on PS3 and vice versa."

Capcom was a pioneer on 3DS with Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition, adding things like online play and significant StreetPass functionality well before other 3DS games, and it looks like Capcom is keeping that forward-thinking attitude for this Vita game.

I asked Ono on a lark about the possibility of a tiny arcade stick for the Vita -- maybe something like the 3DS slidepad thingy, but with arcade hardware.

"We're actually talking to Mad Catz about doing something like that," Ono told us. "You can't replicate the experience entirely on a portable, but I think if we made a small joystick that you could just keep in your bag, and maybe even if you're in economy class, whip it out during a flight, put your Vita in there, and replicate to some degree the arcade experience, it would be really awesome." It's in keeping with Ono's view of portable fighters as practice tools for competitive console/arcade versions.

Capcom emphasized that this is just in talks, and nothing has been decided. But tiny arcade stick!