I think we’re past the time of “putting KI on this other platform will help it.” At least right now. If season 4 comes and gets hype going again, then maybe I could see them putting it out somewhere else, but not PS4 or Switch.
As far as PS4 goes, you’d be throwing another fighting game on to a console that already has a veritable sea of titles in the genre to choose from. I don’t really see how that helps KI all that much.
More to the point, I don’t see how it helps MS, who own the IP. If it won’t sell a ton on PS4, then what balances out the terrible PR of literally giving one of your own IPs to your chief rival? I mean, have you considered the optics of this, LCD? Of basically saying “we want this game to sell more, so we’ll give it to our rival.”
Would Nintendo have done this with Smash when the Wii U was selling like garbage? No. Not in a million years.
As much as people talk of fanboy whining where it pertains to console exclusives, they are the reason to own one console and not another. Sure, there’s brand loyalty, system specs, etc. But you buy a Nintendo system in spite of it being the weakest console because you want Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, Smash, etc. If they just started moving their games to other consoles so they’d sell more, why would anyone ever buy a Nintendo system again?
Now, you might be saying “I’m just talking about one game,” but even then, it’s still a huge PR hit. You not only lose an exclusive, but hand it to your rival and basically tell the world that you need their system to sell your game. MS would never do that, nor should they.
You know what might help KI? Getting more exclusive fighters on the system so that TO’s and the FGC are actually forced to pay attention to the system again. Go to Sega and sign a development deal with them to bring Virtua Fighter 6 and a new Eternal Champions reboot to market.
Talk to Namco and see if funding a new Soul Calibur gets that game made exclusively for Xbox. Do the same with Capcom for a new Darkstalkers game. Get versions of Arc Systems games on Xbox and maybe see about future DLC timed exclusivity opportunities.
Make deals, then make more deals. Make Xbox the place to be for fighting games in spite of Street Fighter V. Get more exclusives than PS4 has and leave them with SFV as their only exclusive fighter. Then talk to Capcom about Street Fighter 6 when the time is right. If you can’t get exclusivity, at least get it back to being multiplatform.
But get back in the game. Get back in the genre. Bring more genre fans in with announcements and titles, and immediately start offering them old seasons of KI for free. Hell, offer them the definitive edition for free.
Get them interested in the KI product while they wait for those other games or when only a few have come out and let them know that there’s more KI on the way (either another season or a new title). Maybe they play a little, like it a bit, and then it’s on their radar so when they see future news on it, they’re more interested, unlike throwing KI in to a sea of fighting games on Sony, where the stuff is already there, with more stuff coming, where you can’t possibly offer them KI for free to get them to try it.
Now, will any of this happen? No. I have no illusions about MS and the fighting genre right now. When Phil said “we’ll make it up to you” with regards to losing SFV to exclusivity, only to do absolutely nothing (that yielded tangible, public results), that was pretty much all I needed to know.
At least for this generation, they’re happy with KI and a few multiplatform titles. I’m happy with KI. But if they want to sell more KI in the future, then they need to bring more fighting game fans to the system. Taking the product to where the players are (ie PS4) is not a viable solution for a variety of reasons.
It’s possible that they pursue a more aggressive approach to the genre when Scorpio comes out. Maybe they see a “fresh” start as a way to hit the reset button and get back what they lost when genre fans migrated from 360 to PS4. Maybe not. Maybe they think the genre is too niche, the fan count too small a reward to be worth the trouble of securing exclusives or trying to lure the Capcoms and Arc Systems of the world in to bringing their games to XB. Who knows.
Either way, it’d be nice to see more fighting games on XB. It’d be nice to see them try and compete more.
TL/DR: Putting KI on a system that already has a ton of fighting games won’t sell more KI. MS needs to bring genre fans back to Xbox and give them KI with the promise of new KI on the horizon to get them care about the game.
