Tekken's characters are like "chess pieces" according to Tekken Producer, Katsuhiro Harada, who considers the franchise's fighters as an "essential" aspect of the game. Therefore, Harada has stated that he'll never do paid DLC characters for the Tekken series.

His comments follow recent controversy surrounding the discovery that Street Fighter X Tekken had its dozen planned DLC fighters already present on the game disc, but Harada assured that his comments are in no way meant as an attack on Capcom.

"Tekken has never had DLC before and charged for it," he told Edge. "This isn’t really directed at Capcom, I have always said this, but I see the characters and their move sets as chess pieces - they are essential items necessary in the game and we would never sell any of those individually."

Harada would still consider paid DLC in the future however, but it would only be for in-game vanity items like unique clothing for your Tekken characters. A character may be offered as pre-order DLC, but it would then be made available as post-launch content at a later date and it'd be free, he said.

In other Tekken news, the embargo lifting on Namco Bandai's Gamers Day event has seen 33 new screenshots emerging for Tekken Tag Tournament 2. You can check out a handful of the screens below, then pore over all 33 in the gallery. It's out in September 2012.