SNK planning crisis???

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SNK planning crisis???

   FGC News ,   January 26, 2025  No Comments

SNK announced the launch of KOF13 for Feb 20. Fans were celebrating, whoop whoop!

They also announced they were scrapping the Steam version and replacing it with a new version with rollback.

Ok, cool, does that mean crossplay? Does that mean new lobbies?  No information on that, yet.

What they did tell us was that the new version was going to cost money. There is no specific price listed on the Steam page but SNK posted on their discord that if you already have the game in your library, the new version will cost just under €7 / $7.

Some fans did not respond positively to this news. Note that this is not the first time SNK has charged for a rollback update, the same thing happened with KOF97.  SNK bet hard but we don’t have any data to tell us what was a success and whether listening to fans was worth it in the end. Right now, the original KOFXIII is getting review bombed on Steam. In the end, a fan who wants to play online will pay whatever it takes, grudgingly. But will there be other people online? That’s another question and I don’t see players boycotting the game if they really love it so much.

The eternal question is simply, would you pay for rollback on a bloated and spec demanding platform when you could play it for free?  The answer seems to be a “uhhhh”. Fans want to play their favourite game without fiddling with strange settings and unofficial apps downloaded from unsettling places on the Internet. There is a reason why neogeo titles sold well on the ps4 and switch, whereas people don’t really play them. It’s the same reason people buy Blu-ray collections and never watch them. It’s just to have it within reach. At some point, you will have time to jump on the sofa and play, or watch. And you want to be extremely comfortable while doing it.  That’s why the steam deck is likely to sell more copies of kof13, compared to the 8k 7.2GHZ GTX5080 monster rig.  But who says these players even want to go online?

Now let’s imagine all this blows over, players cough up blood and cash and are actually willing to play their favourite KOF with rollback.

On a recent stream , Johnny299 mentioned that he wanted to go online to see how many people are playing COTW, and this would be a good indicator if the game was worth buying.

There will be a ton of people going online, and probably a much bigger number will be playing the game offline. It’s a free beta, of course they will.

Just one thing. The open beta launches 20th February. So what exactly do you expect players to do? They can choose between

  • Old KOF that costs $7-15 with reviews of “mixed”
  • Brand new COTW which is FREE

So, if you want to get an indication of the state of the KOF13 playerbase and you find nobody online, how would you feel? Would you ask for a Steam refund?

Meanwhile, everyone is playing COTW, and when that’s over, they may turn on KOF 13, and… well, maybe there will be a resurgence. A revival. But the launch date isn’t helping, it really cannot.

Why did they decide to launch both games on the same date? Is there some sort of internal grudge match between development divisions? Or is the marketing team trying a 2-prong approach to cover all types of fighting game fans? Perhaps they believe that the KOF13 fans will only play KOF13. I’m confident Oda does not believe this and wants everyone to try COTW. So I remain baffled.

As a streamer, you can be sure which game I will try, good luck to the KOFXIII community. I watched the lobby numbers rise and fall, they need to build a tournament scene to bring the hype back. It can be done, it’s a good opportunity for someone who wants to stream. It’s still a legendary game, whatever anyone wants to say, the proof is in the history. Let’s see if COTW can match it.  All we can do now is wait for Feb 20 and see what players choose to play, what will you decide?

 

 

 

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