Fans got really excited when Microsoft announced that Killer Instinct would be arriving on the Xbox One. After a hiatus that spanned nearly two decades, the return of the popular fighter will see big changes to the game. Killer Instinct on the Xbox One will follow a free to play model, details of which have recently been uncovered by Polygon.
“Most fighting games that come out are disc based games where you get a huge cast of awesome characters, but it is a massive cast. Some games have anywhere between 30, 40, even 50 characters. And in reality, most players don’t play that many characters. You just only have so much time to get good at so many characters. So we wanted to take that into consideration and release the game in a way that took that into consideration and allowed players to get in and play the game at the level that they want to play it.”
While that sounds like a reasonable justification, we’ll have to wait and see how much it will actually cost Killer Instinct fans to get the entire Killer Instinct experience a la carte.
“So the way this game will work is when it releases, you’ll be able to play one character for free,” explained Tom Rettig of Microsoft. “You’ll be able to just download the client and play that character — Jago — as much as you want. And you will be able to buy other characters and other content as you see fit. So as much or as little as you want. We wanted there to be basically a wide funnel. We wanted as many players to get in and enjoy the game and experience the game as possible, and to engage in it at a level that they want to engage at.”
For those that don’t want to piece together their Killer Instinct experience, there will be a season pass style offering, which would give players access to the entire library of content. Double Helix nor Microsoft has confirmed the pricing for Killer Instinct just yet, but the title will be a download only launch game for the Xbox One.
