ElvenShadow, the man called Bozac against his will, is a midwest Guilty Gear player living in Japan. He revealed recently on his blog that he got together with Arc System Works employee Pachi for some drinks, and got to talking about the future of Guilty Gear.

"I talked with Pachi quite a bit about the future of Guilty Gear and Blazblue and Arc System works. Basically, I might as well just let the community know whats going on, so I will just say it like it is. Pachi wants to make a new GG fighting game but the bosses at ASW have no desire to make a new GG fighting game at the moment and want to focus on BB. Thats not to say that tey never will again, but if they do, we probably wont see it for a couple of years, and Pachi will probably be the one in charge of it. He wants to make a new GG that feels and plays faithful to the old ones, but he said he would make it 3d graphics sorta similar to SSFIV, but would try to keep the look of the game the same. He also said he would follow the current trend of new fighting games coming out recently by trying to make the game simpler so that new players have an easier time of getting into it. So basically, he says he would take FRCs and Slashbacks out of the game. I tried to convince him to just make FRC timing more lenient but he said they just would be too hard for most average players." (click read more for the rest)

"He really wants to see GG become something big like SF has, even if it means not catering completely to the hardcore players. I gave him all the arguments you would expect, but in the end, it comes down to me seeing things as a hardcore fan and hes looking at things from a business standpoint. But dont take it the wrong way, I can honestly say the man has the utmost respect and love for the series and really wants to see it thrive and even if he did implement those changes, I have confidence it would still play like a GG game. Since the game isnt even in development yet, theres really no reason to even speculate about it yet, but this is basically how it is. We also talked about online AC and basically he agrees with me that it would be a great idea, but that ASW bosses just would rather first make a new GG than re-release AC again, which IMO is a stupid business decision and is also not good for the community. This is in no way Pachi's fault though. He also told me (and I dont know how common knowledge this is but I didnt know till now) that the last GG game that Daisuke Ishiwatari actually worked on was #reload and that once XX came out, Daisuke had already considered to be the complete and final GG game but was convinced to make #reload. Slash and AC directed/worked on/whatever by other people at ASW with very little to no influence by Daisuke Ishiwatari. So I guess we were lucky that we even got Slash and AC. So, if you want to keep playing AC, the scenes outside of Japan are just going to have to try to push their local and national scenes harder as things are, or pretty much settle for playing other games. Dont wait around for a new GG if you really want to play GG again, just start playing it again now. Keep in mind people can enjoy and be good at more than one game. I play a fair amount of SSFIV these days but GG is still my main game and always will be."