Topic: SNK President aims to shut down video games section

[STM]

This is all a massive infodump coming in. The validity is still shakey, but it gives an insight as to how close to death SNK Playmore is yet again.

You probably heard of the departure of Kukino, the game director of kof XIII from snkp. SpekSNK supposed it was a rumor but I can confirm it to you.

One of my contacts in Japan did the interview of Kukino for french website Neo Arcadia and contacted him when the tweets of the ancient programmer came out on the web. Kukino confirmed he left SNKP in November so it's not a rumor anymore.

Besides, two contacts confirmed to me that the new president of SNKP, Ryo Mizufune, wants the video games section to be shut down. He wants to live from license exploitation (queen's blade, kof sky stage) and his influence is one of the things that made Kukino leave the company. It could be possible that many people from the dev team quit too.

The port of KoF XIII is compromised but more than that, it's KoF that is compromised. It's possible that Kof XIII could be the last one of the saga.

Original source of news (French):
http://basgrospoing.fr/2011/01/kof-xiii-a-...playmore-aimera
it-fermer-la-division-jeu/
Translation: http://shoryuken.com/f308/king-fighters-13...ml#post10113975

We already see signs of this with the release of two cash-ins of King of Fighters in KOF Pachislot and KOF Skystage.

Now, while we'd have heard something from November, which is what makes this shaky, assuming this is true, it's a pretty sad state of affairs for fans of SNK's various fighting games and those looking forward to KoF13's home console release. We may as well just try and get someone to find a dump of the game and hack a Dirty PC version akin to BlazBlue Continuum Shift.

[Rin]

What the [tornado fang]?!
That's... that's just horrible.
Jesus CHRIST!
Now I want dat dump of KoF XIII even more, if only out of desperation. D :

[STM]

Really, while there's no describing how mad I am (I'm JUST getting into this series), I can't help but say it's out of the norm. Hasn't SNK stumbling and dying been the story of the brand its whole life since 2000?

[OBJECTION MAN]

I am sad to see this news. Though, it is somewhat inevitable, as KoF was a niche series for a long time now. They never made much attempt to bring in new players like Capcom had. They seemed to rely on the same fan base over and over to buy the titles.

SNK has always been on edge as is. Hell their console had games priced higher than I care to spend ever on a single title. They have been the result of [acid burst] poor decisions for a long time now. I honestly expected them to drop KoF a long time ago, or at least give the series a break. As they went on, each title became more and more thrown together, reusing too many assets. At this point, I even feel like the series is stagnating, and I'm pretty lenient on that sort of thing.

They just come with too little too late, and try to maintain a too high pump out rate. If they had gone with HD sprites way back, or even a proper 3D iteration ala SF4, things may be different. Even when we went to HD, we have fire effects with no alpha blending, and only one super per each character. Did I mention it was a 60$ demo? YOU CAN'T ESCAPE THE SOUND TEST.

Terrible. Honestly, KoF seems to be running itself into the ground. As much as I hate to say it, maybe this would be for the better before the series degrades even more?

Terry Board, you will be missed.

[Solar]

 http://asia.gamespot.com/news/6286721.html

The official story: "In response to Internet rumors from earlier this week, SNK is planning to release a full slate of games in 2011, and expects to continue publishing games worldwide for many years to come."--An SNK Playmore representative.

So yeah, with Kukino leaving who the hell knows what happen to the games themselves, but they're not going anywhere apparently.

Did I mention it was a 60$ demo?

Made by 5 people under bad working conditions...yeah, not sure if I'd ever want to work there anymore.


Honestly, with KoF being at the best it's been in almost a decade (yes I mean XIII not XII) I really don't want it to go anywhere, but I admit Kukino leaving worries me.

[Burst]

I wouldn't ask if the emphasis in the convo wasn't mainly on King of Fighters...but you guys mean ALL of SNK would shut down right?

If so...man, I recently became a big fan of Metal Slug. This sucks. 

[STM]

It certainly seems that way. As for the statement from the company?

It's easy to cover your ass on internal politics. It's highly unlikely you'll hear a representative openly admit, "Yeah, we're pretty much shutting down video games to focus on toys and doodads."

But, in this case, this is one of those times where I hope my cynicism is wrong.