Rare “may do” another Killer Instinct
Betteridge reiterates Gregg Mayles’ past “Revolution” comment
The month of Mark continues (and ends) with another article about Killer Instinct 3. When you think about it, there’s really been a lot of news for a game that’s been teased and denied for the past 10 years. According to Mark Betteridge, Rare has been thinking about making another KI, but it “would require a ‘revolution’ to make it worthwhile.” Sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it?
Betteridge admits that the KI franchise has been a candidate for revival, if only due to Banjo’s recent revival in the form of Nuts & Bolts. So I guess there’s one more positive about the game’s current form of existence. He goes on to add a few comments about the game and why it needs a change: “Killer Instinct is an IP that is fondly remembered and we may do something with it, but it’s a tricky market to be like the old Killer Instinct.
At the time there was Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat and we were thinking, ‘how do we make our own area here?’ and it came from the combo system. The market after that became more and more specialised. And all you do then is make your user-base smaller and smaller and it disappears [to the point where] it’s not really feasible anymore.”
Despite this, Mark still believes that there’s a “revolution” to be found within the fighting game genre: “Once a market gets like that then it needs a revolution to bring something new to it and to kick-start a new growth. It will stagnate for a while and then it needs a real significant change of direction potentially.”
Mark once again justified Banjo’s change by stating that “is a law of diminishing returns to recycle the same game. We wanted to do a game that not only provided a different gameplay experience that we couldn’t do before, but we wanted to build something that we can then build on to do other titles.”
As if that wasn’t enough, Rare is intent on doing what they’ve done pretty well, and that’s creating new IP. Said the other Mark: “We want to be forward-thinking as much as we can. Even though we’ve got a great heritage that gamers love and we love, we want our design team to be thinking for the next thing, what’s the next great idea. We need to define our own space on this console and we’re only going to do that by using new IP.”
Mark Betteridge sums it up at the very end: “The best way to have success is to build your own area. We don’t want to chase a genre. We think the best genres are the ones that don’t exist at the moment.”
As much as a new KI would be great, it’s been tough to anticipate it when Rare keeps mentioning Banjo and how drastic of a change the game did not turn out to be. As was mentioned in the Gregg Mayles article, it’s pretty easy to believe that they found this “revolution” for the game already, and one can only hope that it won’t play (or feel) so dramatically different compared to the old Killer Instinct titles.
Somehow related news
- Killer Instinct on Wii? ()
- Fans bet on Killer Instinct 3 for 2009 ()
- Rare “not working on” Killer Instinct 3, according to Ken Lobb ()
- Mata Piñata? ()
- Rare threaten with their Killer Instinct? ()
3 Comments
Recycling is good, it helps the planet.
“We think the best genres are the ones that don’t exist at the moment”
That is so wrong, this new ideology that Rare has, it is their doom. Oh well, at least the next year we’ll have KI3, a first person fighter game…¿?
BRING K.I. BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rare needs to bring K.I. back before the generation that grew up on it … dies!
Comment by Jo From NY — 04.Jun.09 @ 9:19 pm
Forging new genre’s could be a very good move for Rare. But it may be that whatever they’re coming up with won’t exactly fit into any existing genre, or even be so straight-cut as to fit into a new genre.
Doing stuff competitors aren’t doing has worked very well for Nintendo. Can it work well for Rare?
I can’t wait to see what new characters/game concepts Rare have for next year.
Comment by Rinx — 03.Dec.08 @ 10:15 pm