While looking for SFV on Youtube, i found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laL1jyE2rXg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELuASWW4LQo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Qctgd6pqY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbX4ezvaRlU

Now i just need SFIV here so i can mess around too x)

I have KOF13, honestly haven't played it much though.

They are 3d models at all times. They look like sprites.
It is easier to see in stills, where it is shown that they are actual 3d models.
http://www.gamespek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1386294682-2.jpg
http://www.gamespek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1386294919-3.jpg
http://www.gamespek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1386294920-4.jpg

It looks AMAZINGLY like GGXX in motion. Far closer to the 2d ones than SF4 ever was, and I think that SF4 does a pretty good job of replicating the 2d constraints.

Why not 2-3 years? Although they [s]claimed[/s] boasted it would last a decade, that's clearly not the case. it's easy to speculate that it won't last more than the minimum 5-ish years since the hardware isn't a huge a leap forward over PC hardware; And being x86 architecture (glorified PC's) they can't really push more out of the hardware than they already are.

Of course they may decide not to do another generation, it's been speculated M$ might be pulling out of the console market with considerations of how the tablets are getting cheaper and more powerful.

Nintendo on the other hand will probably make more consoles (and handhelds) for years to come...

As for Sony... Since they are mostly known and doing PlayStation right now... I don't know.

Oh yeah. I've spent a lot of time looking at videos on YouTube and both my buddy and I came to the conclusion that it's definitely only 3D models during the close ups. Now that I see some large high quality stills without all those compression artifacts - yeah, they do look like cel-shaded 3D models after all. My apologies.

The hardware is actually more or less middling from 2 or 3 years ago. The GPU in the PS4 is similar to a Radeon 7770, which is middle of the road 2012 stuff.
It's amazing trickery they did isn't it? It really, really looks 2d. Particularly in youtube captures (then again, with the compression, the trickery is even more impressive). There's a Ky vs Millia fight on youtube that looks like it could be out of GGXX at times, since the standing poses (and most of the attacks) have the exact same keyframes.


I can't wait to play it

Yeah, it definitely won't last a decade and already the last generation's lifespan was uhealthy. I still don't see the next generation happening before 2018 or 2019, though.

They are 3D models, just do an Ultra. :)

For older games like MvC2, the background was 3D but the characters were 2D sprites.

Yeah, that's one of the videos I've checked. I'm still not 100% sure, though, whether the characters are rendered in real-time at all times. They might just as well be pre-rendered sprites since the game does not seem to apply any perspective to them most of the time.

The devs are certainly extremely clever when it comes to this illusion, though. Assuming that the characters are at all times rendered in real-time: it's brilliant that they have limited the animation to keyframes rather than using interpolation as it is basically always done in 3D. That the amount of frames in the character animations is (nearly) the same as in the earlier games was one of the reasons why I was convinced that they are 2D sprites after all (outside of the obvious 3D sequences).

Yeah, the question was whether they are 3D models at all times. After looking at the stills that Luisfius linked to it's rather clear, yes.