This year, delays have been hitting a lot of games that were in the middle of development in 2020. It has been a common — and completely understandable — occurrence. One of the most recent delays was for The King of Fighters XV, the next entry in SNK’s flagship fighting franchise. Not only was the game delayed, but a PC version had yet to be officially revealed. That changed today as SNK officially announced that The King of Fighters XV is heading to PC next year.
In a Tweet sent out earlier today, SNK at last made it official. King of Fighters XV will be releasing for PC via Steam, Windows, and the Epic Game Store in the first quarter of 2022. ‘Quarter one’ in business terms is the period of January through March. I would say that later in that period, around March, is more likely, however.
This is great news to hear for PC fighting game fans, but not totally unexpected. After all, every other major King of Fighters game has been released on PC. But it is nice to have that official confirmation. SNK is going with a wide spread for the game’s release, covering basically every major platform outside of the Switch and Xbox One. But what many fans are still waiting to hear confirmation on though is the status of cross-play and rollback netcode.
Lots of platforms, lots of hands to throw
Considering the game will be available on so many platforms, it would be a boon for the game to feature cross-play. The game’s producer, Yasuyuki Oda, also confirmed in late February that the game will feature rollback netcode. But what form that rollback will take is very important. If it is anything like the rollback featured in the recent re-release of KoF 2002, then we are in good hands. But we still have a lot of time to learn that though, and character trailers for the game are still releasing.
However, it is only a matter of time before we run out of characters. Considering that we don’t know much about the actual mechanics of the game, it would be nice to hear more on that front after we see the whole roster.
