The King of Fighters XV is out and is taking the fighting game online space by storm. So how’s the game’s future looking in terms of DLC?

Apart from the new Garou Mark of the Wolves team (Rock Howard, B.Jenet, Gato), the Southtown team (Geese, Billy Kane, Yamazaki), and a few others, there’s probably going to be more oncoming. It really depends on business, at least according to KOF XV’s creative director Eisuke Ogura.

According to a recent Famitsu interview (via ATRyoSakazaki), he said that the process of selecting characters as DLC has to be very selective. However, if the upcoming ones do well sales-wise, they can distribute future DLC for free.

“If KOF XV sells incredibly well, we may be able to distribute various characters for free.”

The production team has also heard many DLC and character requests that seem off-kilter. There are even requests for Art of Fighting’s Ryuhaku Todoh (Kasumi Todoh’s dad) to even the US Sports Team (Bryan Battler, Heavy D, Lucky Glauber), which probably had to be taken with a grain of salt.

“As a tendency, the requests eventually go in a maniacal direction. They are consolidated into requests for the US Sports Team or for Ryuhaku Todoh.

We often get requests for DLC, but there is also the question of whether DLC will sell. It is difficult to judge whether such maniacl requests are just “stories” or not.”

The team also talk a bit about other topics:

Regarding KOF Couples Ryo Sakazaki & King, and Andy Bogard & Mai Shiranui

Seishi Ando, Lead Programmer: This is a difficult point, because the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting teams are based on works that already exist. I’m not sure if we can take that relationship and make it our own in KOF. If we change the relationship, it would affect the original work, so we don’t want to do that.

Will There Be Sequels To Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting?

Ogura: For our part, we’d like to see you move forward with the story there as soon as possible.

Rollback Netcode

Masaru Tsuji, Technical Director: The adoption of the rollback method was not decided from the beginning, but rather during the development process. As a programmer, the impact was quite large, and I had to work very hard on the schedule.

Once the [rollback netcode] is released, we will be receiving feedback from players in earnest, but at this stage of development, I have the feeling that we’ve gone as far as we can as a team. For the players who have played SNK’s fighting games up until now, we are finally able to provide a rollback fighting environment, which is a relief to all of us in the development team.

KOF XV is out right now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series, and Xbox One. For more on the game, check out our early KOF XV tier list.