Today Capcom announced with  a press release that the company is entering a cross-licensing agreement with Bandai Namco related to online matching in intellectual properties like the Street Fighter series.

The press release explains that the purpose of the agreement is to "improve the user experience" while accelerating the production of games and reducing development costs for both publishers. On top of that, they aim to more effectively utilize patents related to game series like Street Fighter in order to "deliver even more exciting content" to gamers.

We also hear that the agreement is just a starting point, and Capcom will continue to explore cross-licensing opportunities to protect its patents and at the same time improving the experience of gamers and contribute to the health of the game industry as a whole.

The press release did not include specific details on what the agreement entails, or what kind of content gamers can expect as a result of the deal. That being said, Capcom and Bandai Namco have been quite close in the past, resulting in collaborations like Street Fighter X Tekken in 2012, on top of the opposite title Tekken X Street Fighter, that is currently on hold. Street Fighter's character Akuma also recently appeared in Bandai Namco's Tekken 7.

Unfortunately, at the moment we can only speculate on what this really means for the end user, but Capcom does hold several patents related to its fighting games, and it's most likely that Bandai Namco might now get to use some of them in its own. It'll be interesting to see what the future of this agreement holds.