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I like King of Fighters, but what would it take to make it more successful in the west?
- Thread starter Shinobido Heart
- Start date
Is this bizzarro world
In what universe Blazblue has a stronger brand recognition than KoF and all the series under its belt
It'll never gain any momentum if it continues to look like KOFXIV. Rationalize the graphics however you like, there's not a single polygonal fighting game of similar stature that's as ugly as that game, and for a franchise that's persevered through harsh times almost solely on the strength of its characters, it needs to do better.
Out of curiosity, which super cancel was it that caused this much grief?
I love all the KOF games, so I'd love to see them succeed more in the West. But I do think they would need to rethink the look of XV, and chang it up from XIV. Gameplay wise the game is great, though some of those inputs are still too difficult for me to ever pull off online.
The series and SNK are already very popular in the West. Meaning, the West is not only the US.
Where I grew up it was 90% Neo Geo machines (the remaining 10 being other 68k based machines) with no Capcom presence after SSF2. No Xmen series, no MvC, no Alpha and no SF3. I didn't play those until emulation. This cemented my firm believe that Neo Geo is the most successful arcade board of all time.
And for the record I'm not from Latin America. The situation reminds me of American football vs European football.
Where I grew up it was 90% Neo Geo machines (the remaining 10 being other 68k based machines) with no Capcom presence after SSF2. No Xmen series, no MvC, no Alpha and no SF3. I didn't play those until emulation. This cemented my firm believe that Neo Geo is the most successful arcade board of all time.
And for the record I'm not from Latin America. The situation reminds me of American football vs European football.
You bring up a curious point. For as popular as the Alpha series are here in Era (mostly due to the american posters i believe) i never seen a single cabinet for it or SF3 and i used to go to a lot of arcades back in the day. I even saw one for the 3D series (Street Fighter EX? forgot the name now), but no dice for alpha or SF3
Due to all the complications within SNK as a company there's been a huge time gap between KoF XIII & KoF XIV though so SNK has to bring the brand back up again to make up for all that lost time.
Not faulting them on it or anything since SNK went through a shit ton of shakeups but I do think their popularity in the West, and I mean the west as a whole not just the US, has waned a lot over the years until the recent KoF and the ACA ports.
BlazBlue has always had a stronger brand appeal than KOF. Arc Sys saw the multimedia strategy way before SNK and they capitalized on it. BlazBlue is, without a doubt, ArcSys' most successful venture into last generation and solidified their status as a premier FG developer. Thinking otherwise is ignorant.
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And again, CvS3 will never happen. I don't think SNK -- or any developer for that matter -- would continue to work with another dev that burned them as badly as Capcom didnwith CvS2 (they didn't get paid for the licensing of their characters)
Call me ignorant then. When Blazblue started KoF already had peaked and started to decline so "always had stronger brand appeal than KoF" is lunacy from your part. Obviously i'm not arguing Blazblue is stronger this gen (which isn't really a fair comparison to make, KoF was pretty much dead and done for years before XIV while Blazblue released game after game) but brand recognition (emphasis on recognition) is far more than just that. I'm using my own locale as basis for my opinion of course (just like the thread is using the US as basis) and King of Fighters was and still is more recognizable and fondly remembered than any Blazblue game.
I was just talking about the "successfulness" part, not brand recognition.
As of now, Blazblue has more audience, streaming appeal and competitive presence (I basically took all the games present at this year's EVO in my post) than KoF so > more successful.
Still I was baffled at the amount of Blazblue games, I was naĂŻvely thinking there was like 3-4 of them.
TLDR : KoF is past his time and I don't see him making it back to the top in this saturated market.
Can't see what more SNK can do beyond improving their 3D graphics and throwing more money at promotion/tournaments. Maybe they could try to lean more into the series' mid-90s anime appeal?
Personally I would like it if they made more of the characters buff. Kyo and Iori have gotten too skinny and all the women have generic sexy builds. Leona in particular should be ripped but looks too soft in XIV.
Personally I would like it if they made more of the characters buff. Kyo and Iori have gotten too skinny and all the women have generic sexy builds. Leona in particular should be ripped but looks too soft in XIV.
I would say a fun easy to play fighter ala Smash would be great but they had to ruin it by making it a creepy fetish title.
...huh? Did I wander into another DQ thread? Their soundtracks have always been some of the best in the genre barring the early Playmore era. XIV's OST was magnificent. If there's anything that needs improving it's not music.
I think one thing that would help with its appeal is get some proper English voice acting in their games. Story is a such a huge strength for KOF and they really need to double down on that to help attract new fans. While certainly not the best, I'm surprised they haven't worked with someone like Netflix to get KOF Destiny out there. I think the old Fatal Fury anime from the 90s certainly helped back then, but they need something like that NOW.
That and, yeah, like people have said, find a way to refine the graphics so that's it really eye catching for people.
...huh? Did I wander into another DQ thread? Their soundtracks have always been some of the best in the genre barring the early Playmore era. XIV's OST was magnificent. If there's anything that needs improving it's not music.
I think one thing that would help with its appeal is get some proper English voice acting in their games. Story is a such a huge strength for KOF and they really need to double down on that to help attract new fans. While certainly not the best, I'm surprised they haven't worked with someone like Netflix to get KOF Destiny out there. I think the old Fatal Fury anime from the 90s certainly helped back then, but they need something like that NOW.
That and, yeah, like people have said, find a way to refine the graphics so that's it really eye catching for people.
Wait, what do you call a modern soundtrack?
Be it remixes
or not,
SNK hasn't lost it, and it's on par with other fighting games with their own style.
User Banned (1 Month): Long, continued history of aggressive behavior and hostility.
"modern soundtrack"
Shut the fuck up man
As if SNK is having difficulty producing music still lmfao
What constitutes a modern soundtrack , what elements are needed in music production to be 'modern???'
Shut the fuck up man
As if SNK is having difficulty producing music still lmfao
What constitutes a modern soundtrack , what elements are needed in music production to be 'modern???'
What are the efforts SNK makes to push their brand in the minds of the consumers worldwide?
Mobile games are by far their most commercially succesful branch and gives their company the most exposure. However, that is almost exclusively applicable to Japan.
Hardware like the Neo Geo mini, KOF animated series as well as all their console games are all targeted at enthusiasts.
Bumping the KOF franchise to AAA would enable them to compete with SF, Tekken, etc., give them more exposure and potentially raising sales and profit, which should be in favor of the faceless Chinese conglomerate they are invested into.
Music is fine I should have said the audio engineering itself it doesn't sound as good sonically as some other titles
Fighters as a genre have been pretty slept on with Injustice/Mortal Kombat X probably doing the best of the bunch, so more realism in the graphics would help. To be honest though I think only the resurrection of location based arcades will bring KOF back. There's something unique about the lure of a loud neon explosion of light, sound and color out of retail space that beckons the young and young at heart like no other. Fight games keep people in the arcades, but they have to have characters and graphics not offered in home editions of the game.
Their advertising front for their products have all been focused on Japan, with merch / manga tie ins / anime / collaborations all hitting for that region. You frame the focus on JP enthusiasts as if it were a bad thing and yet, SNK's turning a pretty significant profit out of it. Believe it or not SNK went on the record to say XIV was commercially successful.
There's literally nothing that needs to be done to make SNK any more successful than they are now. There's nothing that can be done to get more US players into the game. Why fix what's not broken?
For this game to catch more of an audience they need to
- ditch the difficult motion inputs.
- ditch the mobile phone graphics... I'm not saying they should go back to sprite work, but they definitely need to improve the aesthetics.
- build some actual hype around it with smart marketing strategies.
- call the next game Fatal Fury
- add in Gai Tendo and some of the other Buriki One characters
...The last 2 are selfish requests.
- ditch the difficult motion inputs.
- ditch the mobile phone graphics... I'm not saying they should go back to sprite work, but they definitely need to improve the aesthetics.
- build some actual hype around it with smart marketing strategies.
- call the next game Fatal Fury
- add in Gai Tendo and some of the other Buriki One characters
...The last 2 are selfish requests.
I've been playing 2D fighters casually since the mid-80s, and the KoF series feels the best for movement compared to its peers. I'm not referring to air dashing and whatnot, but rather, jumping and hopping which feel so fluid with so many trajectories/ arcs involved from a mere 8-way digital movement system. Also, the controller needs to be of the highest standard to appreciate this, especially a joystick that performs better than the popular Sanwa JLF.
SNK needs to market this as one of its premier features. Any graphics and roster improvements are just a bonus that would separate KoF from its competitors.
SNK needs to market this as one of its premier features. Any graphics and roster improvements are just a bonus that would separate KoF from its competitors.
Mexico is not usually considered part of the West though? The West = EU, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
There is only ONE character in the entirety of ALL of KOF and other SNK franchises that has a Pretzel input. The complicated input of a specific move from one character has been grossly misrepresenting the entire cast having equally complicated inputs
Yeah but theyre definitely not as easy as something like street fighter or NRS games. That's always been the complaints from people when I try to get them to play it
Some will disagree with me, but I want them to bring back the tag system from XI, KOF matches are so damn long. It needs better graphics than the last one for sure.
Did you try XIV? It's way easier to play and there's a demo on PS4.
Actually, there are several (Geese, Lawrence, K9999, Nameless) but your point still stands.
The pretzel motion is still easier to do than the air Break Spiral motion (Duck king, Vice)
About the topic, I don't think there is anything else that SNK can do about their west (USA) popularity, except increasing their output and release more games per year.
I don't even think better visuals would help KOF getting on the same level some other games in the US. I mean SNK tried this with KOF XIII even and that didn't help in fact dev costs for XII and XIII were so exorbitant due to way they designed the sprites, SNK had to temporarily leave the console market and push heavy on Pachinko.
If anything the acquisition of Leyou Technologies was somewhat of a small blessing because if gave them some seed money to push back into the console market.
It's amazing how SNK keeps getting into this precarious situations and still manage to craw back out.
Now this time now that they have most of the long time vets behind Garou and Real Bout, alongside Neo_G. I think they are in the right place by making a KOF that emphasizes more on a large cast and gameplay that odes to the formula along the lines of KOF 98 and 2002.
I don't mind they work more on the presentation side of things but SNK needs to make a happy medium between XIII and XIV in terms of art work and roster / gameplay.
If anything the acquisition of Leyou Technologies was somewhat of a small blessing because if gave them some seed money to push back into the console market.
It's amazing how SNK keeps getting into this precarious situations and still manage to craw back out.
Now this time now that they have most of the long time vets behind Garou and Real Bout, alongside Neo_G. I think they are in the right place by making a KOF that emphasizes more on a large cast and gameplay that odes to the formula along the lines of KOF 98 and 2002.
I don't mind they work more on the presentation side of things but SNK needs to make a happy medium between XIII and XIV in terms of art work and roster / gameplay.
I feel I'm qualified to comment on this subject, because XIV was the very first KOF I have bought and played.
It was very frustrating and I strongly believe KOF needs to be much more lenient on its inputs & timings. What I mean --
For chars with fireball and dragon-punch moves, I could only get them to come out like 50% to 60% of the time. But when I play Street FIghters, I can get them to come out like 90+% of the time.
And I'm strictly talking about just in practice mode standing there, not even in a real match. So can someone explain this? Why is KOF so strict or tight on their inputs like this?
Because all this did was piss me off and not want to play the game at all. If they're going to be that tight with just fb and dp moves, then I'm not going to bother playing a game like that.
Keep in mind KOF input timing is very different than Street Fighter also unlike Street Fighter, KOF does not have shortcut commands. This makes the game generally unfriendly in terms of pad usage.
KOF cannot be approached like a Street Fighter game in it's control and you only frustrate yourself if you try to play it a Street Fighter game.
KOF cannot be approached like a Street Fighter game in it's control and you only frustrate yourself if you try to play it a Street Fighter game.
Maybe it's their old-school mentality, where special moves are meant to be harder to perform, and a penalty for failure, rather than as easy was walking (slight exaggeration).
Honestly, anything they'd do to try to appeal to the north American mainstream would probably make the game lesser for actual fans of kof so lets not go changing things just for the sake of money/popularity. It very rarely ends well for any creative medium.
I think there is a valid point here. Making the controls more lenient or more like Street Fighter would simply mean make KOF play less like a KOF game.
KOF sprite work are more realistic / real to life design at least in the style was done prior to XII, (i.e 94 ~ XI). The overly anime / super bulky designs of XI and XIII felt more appropriate for something like Real Bout and not so much a KOF game.
So if SNK were to take the design cues of '98, I'm not sure if this would fit well in something like the cel shade approach of ArcSys did with Xrd. This over the top overly colorful and unrealistic proportion to the character designs seems wholly unsuited for KOF.
It needs snk to get all esports and make the gameplay easy so no one ever has to work for their victories.
That's pretty arbitrary. The West doesn't just mean the anglophone world. Come on. Like that doesn't even include most of Europe.
That depends what "West" means. Here on Brazil is really popular and 2002 with online is one of the best sellers on PC.
I think it's too complex for the north-americans.
I think it's too complex for the north-americans.
I really doubt it. It looks terrible.
I can't believe there's only 14 characters. How do you go from 50 characters in KOFXIV to 14? SNKH is mostly re-using character assets from XIV and XIV still has more female characters than SNKH.
The roster is missing so many great female characters from SNK's history and they went with gender-bent Terry Bogard.
SNKH isn't a celebration of women. It doesn't honor these characters. It's a dumb joke game aimed at I don't know who.
One of the biggest things would be graphics. They'd have to compete with Tekken 7 or SFV in terms of aesthetics.
After there'd have to be some more push on the casual aspects. Id almost recommend a soft-reboot of sorts. Just call the next one king of fighters and make the story mode a recap of the prior games or something easy to start from.
Gameplay would need a slight change to in the input field probably. A lot of this doesn't sound like good changes for the hardcore so they'd have to find a balance.
After there'd have to be some more push on the casual aspects. Id almost recommend a soft-reboot of sorts. Just call the next one king of fighters and make the story mode a recap of the prior games or something easy to start from.
Gameplay would need a slight change to in the input field probably. A lot of this doesn't sound like good changes for the hardcore so they'd have to find a balance.