Killer Instinct Will Be “The Real Deal”, Microsoft Promises

When Killer Instinct for Xbox One was unveiled, fans of the franchise immediately sidelined the title as a quick cash in play by Microsoft, as it was made known that you’d only get to play with Jago, and if you wanted other roster members, you’d have to pay for them.

But according to corporate VP of Microsoft Studios Phil Spencer, people will fall in love with the new game, adding that even if Rare isn’t developing the title, there are some core Killer Instinct people who understand the franchise helping developer Double Helix.

“There were a couple of things. We wanted to pick a game that we had the passion to build,” Spencer told OXM. “We had the internal team with Rare creative people – there were certain people that I wanted to make sure were close to this experience to make sure it’s tried and true. People ask me about Rare and I always go back to, like, Battletoads, but there aren’t many people from those games that are still around.

“There were a couple of things. We wanted to pick a game that we had the passion to build,” said Spencer. “We had the internal team with Rare creative people – there were certain people that I wanted to make sure were close to this experience to make sure it’s tried and true. People ask me about Rare and I always go back to, like, Battletoads, but there aren’t many people from those games that are still around.

“We had a core of people that still understood what Killer Instinct was about. We thought some of the features of Xbox One, like asynchronous matchmaking where while I’m actually fighting it’s setting up my next game, made a great mechanic for a fighting game. I won’t say the things on Twitter had no impact on it, I wanted to bring back something and Killer Instinct just seemed like the right thing.”

He added: ”We are building this to be a great fighting game,” he said. “This is not some hacked-off remake. We’re working with Mad Catz on control, we’ve got Rare people looking at it. We’ve got people focusing on how it’s going to play because we want to build a great fighting game built for a live ecosystem. This isn’t going to cash in on the name; it’s going to be a real frontline game that people fall in love with.”

Killer Instinct is an Xbox One launch title.