All our staff have brushed up their skills day by day.



But what’s the best way for them to be motivated should be our fans’ reactions after a game release. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Really, with SMASH ULT coming out, it makes me appreciate KoF XIV a bit more. Reason being, it really helps to have some solid ground-work when making ambitious projects. Beyond just Sakurai being crazy meticulous and hard working, I love the fact that all the iterations of Smash allow them to focus on bringing certain characters, content, and improvements to things. We'd never have ULT if the first game that laid the grown work had nearly as many characters. We'd never get this much guest music with legendary composers if the first game was treated like PlayStation Allstars.I hope KOF XV feels the same, in 2020. Heroines, XIV, and SamSho will all give the devs, artist, and groups a lot more experience together, and as Neo-SNK, than they had upon starting XIV. Even what Capcom and Namco have grown SFV and T7 into from their first releases gives new levels for them to rise towards.This is a pretty nice Interview Arcade Attack had with Oda just days ago: https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/yasuyuki-oda-snk/ In this case, I especially like this quote:I think it's great to see how far they've come. But also as a long time SNK fan, I think it's great to see how...they are now. They don't seem to overspend, over extent, or set unrealistic expectations. They're focused on surviving and growing, and they're full of staff that seems to have gotten the ridiculous, unsustainable craziness out of their system.It feels so, SO much better than the old ticking time-bomb of constant potential failure and death they were on back during KoF XII. Those days seems well behind us now.