According to studio head Yosuke Hayashi, "We don't feel that it's right for fighting games. We feel like this is a kind of sport, and you don't change the rules for sports. Everybody plays by the same rules. You don't have a 14-player soccer game versus an 11-player soccer game. That's just not fair."
He explained, "It's a similar thing to if certain people have all these characters and others don't. It makes it an unfair game, and we don't think that's the right way to go for fighting games," then promised, "We have no plans to sell characters as downloadable content."
Hayashi then noted that creating fighters also means the developer has to make sure that they are gameplay balanced as well.
"Balance is extremely important, and it's also very hard to do," he described, "Even with over 20 characters that's still a real challenge. If we had 50, how much more time would need to balance the game? It gets that much harder to get it right, and it's already very difficult to get right."
Dead or Alive 5 is due to be released on the 25th September this year for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
