Please communicate with us on the future of KI

Game Suggestions & Feedback
1

Please know that I’m not coming from the angle that fans “deserve” anything.

I also don’t want this to come off like a rant because it’s NOT. You guys have been awesome at communicating with us over the years; of wading in to the deep end of the forum and responding to fans directly, which is endlessly appreciated.

However, am I the only one that feels like we’ve been in the dark for a while?

After season 3 ended with the release of Shadow Lords late last year, we found out that there are three more characters and some other stuff like Ultimates, some skins, etc, which is great. But when asked about the future of the game, we’ve mainly heard this year that we’re in a “post season 3 mode” or that we’re “post seasonal” or something along those lines.

-Does that mean there are definitively no more seasons, ever?

-How much longer does the post seasonal content last (especially since we’re at the end of everything that’s been previously announced)?

-What about the Season 3 Survey characters like Lovecraftian, Djinn, Pre-Transformation Cinder, etc? Are those not happening?

-Will the rest of the cast get Ultimates at some point?

-Will we ever get another full on character rebalance?

-Will 3.9 be the final update for the game or will there be more quality of life updates, bug fixes, etc?

-Will we ever see any other types of updates like changing the UI colors or changing / upgrading stuff that fans have asked for over the years like faces, hair, retros, etc?

-Will there be any more skin packs, outfits, stages, etc that we can buy at some point?

-Will any more fan input go in to anything about this game?

So while it’s always nice to get a string of stuff like we’ve had throughout 2017, it feels like in getting a stray character here and a skin pack there with no overarching construct of a seasonal model where we know what’s guaranteed over the course of several months, that we’ve been dealing with relative uncertainty for a while now.

It’d be awesome if they could give us a little bit of a hint or clue in terms of what the future might or might not hold. Maybe even have some sort of town hall type of deal in the form of @BlitzedKraig or @TempusChaoti doing a KI Q&A? This might be especially helpful given where we are in the content push (aka there’s no more content we really know about).

I know there’s stuff they can’t tell us and stuff that’s up in the air. I know they don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver. I totally respect that 100%.

But it’d be great if the lines of communication could open back up again a little bit and they could start informing us of what’s happening with this game as much as they possibly can. I miss the weekly textual streams, I miss knowing that we were getting a large amount of content and what that content would be.

TL/DR: Sorry to be a pain. I’m sure many of the MS people are returning from Gamescom, exhausted and jetlagged. But as a fan of this game, I’m hoping that some of the @developers might see this and maybe take some questions soon on what the future might hold for this game or shed some light on what, if anything, is being worked on, not because we’re owed anything, but because MS and IG have been so awesome about communicating with us in the past, and it’d be fantastic if that could continue now when we don’t really know much of anything beyond what we’ve recently received.

23 Likes
2

Was really hoping for something at Gamescon other than “omg look at this 4k!”. Maybe there might be something, a tease, anything?

Then again, maybe it’s too early. There’s no denying that we have been spoiled to a routine and active response that when it suddenly isn’t pouring news, we get impatient. A normal response and withdrawal I suppose.

If that is the case, then it will simply be like any other game developer that simply updates minor things until a big release at E3 or so.

Anyways, I’m not holding my breath, I’ll wait for something new or crazy to come out down the line. Otherwise I shall return to my dojo.

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3

It’s hard to express it any better than this. It would be nice to know… anything.

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4

All you’re going to get is stay tuned. Well unless you talk to james goddard. Then you might actually get some kind of answer.

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5

I dunno, I’ve been hearing rumblings that Microsoft has been tightening the purse strings on the entire Xbox division. Not say that that’s why, but it’s possible the KI team may be put into a state of limbo where they have laid out where they want KI to go but can’t act on it, can’t say anything, and they themselves keep getting hyped and want to share it, but can’t say anything beyond trying to pass on the hype with nothing to back it up.

…or they could all be taking an extended vacation. What do I know?

But yeah, it would be nice if we could hear something beyond 3.9 and a few color packs.

2 Likes
6

I want to note this one, because something from the last set of patch notes caught my eye. In a lot of instances, they talked about a ‘frame date review’ of certain characters as a vessel to why xyz change was made to a character. It’s not a rebalance in the sense of, say, S3’s initial overhaul but my guess is that 3.8 covered a certain number of character and 3.9 might do the same.

Just a theory though.

7

How come? Has the Xbone not sold well? Or the exclusive games?
Does anyone know the sales numbers for the console, and now that we’re at it, the sales numbers for KI as well?

8

…I’m assuming this is sarcasm, am I right?
Tone is so hard to convey in text.

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No, I was being quite earnest. I honestly don’t know how well the Xbone and KI sold.

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The last i checked, for some reason, news kept telling me that MS had stopped reporting the number of xbox consoles sold.

KI was impossible to track, because i wanted to know the same thing as far as dollar sales generated. But since they made the game free-to-play with pay-for-this and pay-for-that or here’s-a-bundle pricing, i figure this is what makes it hard to determine unless you’re a bean counter at MS someplace.

You’ve peaked my interest again, though, so i’ll look later.

11

From hearing from various sources, though I will admit I can’t remember which one at the moment, their console sales have been roughly around…I’m wanting to say a 5th…of PS4 sales, and every other major system is outselling them, even the 3DS. But on a more positive note I heard today the XB1X is currently either outselling the PS4 Pro or outpacing it.
But yeah hard numbers aren’t easy to come by. Microsoft has been pretty adament lately about keeping people in the dark as to their sales, hence why I said I was hearing rumblings.

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That’s never a good sign when they hide their numbers from the public. Usually means nothing good.

Makes sense then. I’m surprised KI has lived this long.

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Microsoft has repeatedly said ki was a success.

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Here’s one report I saw:

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Far as sales of the one in 2016 they had reached 20 million or so. The ps4 had sold around 35 million by then. Unfortunately the e3 debut of the one hurt the system. That and Sony had a head start on them.

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But by how much?
People’s definition of a game’s success differs greatly. Glad to hear Microsoft thinks that of KI, but say, someone like Capcom thinks Street Fighter V was a commercial failure for only selling only 1.7m copies across both platforms (PS4 and PC).

So I am quite curious to see how much KI has sold.

Edit:
I did some research, and this is the only thing I could find:

Total Units

  • North America: 0.07m, 65.9%
  • Europe: 0.03m, 24.7%
  • Rest of the World: 0.01m, 9.4%
    = Global: 0.11m

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/73067/killer-instinct-2013/

… I would personally not call that a success, tbh.

17

By their words the game was downloaded over 4 million times and it wasn’t uncommon for ki to have more players online than halo or gears. So it was pretty successful. Since ki was digital for most of its life it’s hard to get an exact number. Physical copies naturally didn’t see as much.

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Seeing as it is a free-to-play game, the number of downloads is not the same as being a success sales-wise. They need the money to make more content, after all.

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Yeah. Idk the exact numbers. But ms has always said ki was a surprising success for them.

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And as a confounding factor S1 & 2 were included in the Games with Gold program, so it’s hard to say even then how it factors into sales.