During Sony’s October State of Play showcase, SNK confirmed that its upcoming fighter the King of Fighters XV will be getting an open beta test on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 this coming November.
Arguably the biggest fighting game release of 2022 (that we know of so far), the King of Fighters XV will be the first new entry in the storied series to feature rollback netcode. The latter allows fighting games, which are notoriously sensitive to lag, to be played online over large distances. It does so by basically ignoring latency and letting a player’s inputs and actions play out in a set amount of time and simply rolling the game back to a synced state if this causes both players’ games to lose sync.
The ability of this form of networking—to make fighting games playable online—has led to its adoption in multiple titles, such as Guilty Gear Strive, Melty Blood Type Lumina and Street Fighter V, and caused other developers to attach it as a buzzword to their games, even without properly implementing it—as is the case with Tekken 7. (Read: Fighting in the time of COVID: the problems of online play and how the community has adapted)
The sheer amount of work needed to implement this form of networking, however, has meant that a smaller company like SNK has only previously used it for rereleases of their older games, until now.
With King of Fighters XV being the first new KOF to feature rollback, many players had hoped for a beta test for the game, similar to the beta tests that Arc System Works held for its own seminal rollback fighter, Guilty Gear Strive, earlier this year.
Now, SNK has answered those prayers, at least for those on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. As detailed in the trailer below, the King of Fighters XV open beta for both consoles opens at 12:00 pm Japan Standard Time (11:00 PM local time) on Nov. 20 until 11:59 Japan time (10:00 pm local time) on Nov. 22. (Read: Riot set to reveal their League of Legends fighting game soon)
The King of Fighters XV open beta will feature both casual online matches as well as private room matches. In addition, it will also feature an offline training mode for any players looking to figure explore the eight confirmed characters for the beta: Shermie, Chris, Yashiro, Shun’ei, Kyo, Iori, Chizuru and newcomer Dolores.
In addition, the trailer also gave fans their first glimpse at new character Dolores—one of only two newcomers so far revealed for this game. SNK also dropped a separate character trailer for Dolores showing off some of what she brings to the game.
The trailer also confirms that Dolores will join fellow newcomer Isla and series veteran Heidern to form “Team Rival.” For those speculating on the game’s roster, this means that there’s still one more team out of 13 confirmed for the game with no revealed characters as of yet.
King of Fighters XV launches on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC via Steam and Epic on February 17, 2022.
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