After years of silence, it seems the fans and community behind the popular fighting game Killer Instinct, may finally see a new entry in the series. In a recent podcast on XboxEra, Shpeshal_Nick claimed to have insider information regarding the next entry within the Killer Instinct franchise. “What I’ve been told is that yes, Killer Instinct is in active development,”
A launch title for the original Xbox One, Killer Instinct was a smaller project compared to other games of its time. The game was first developed by Double Helix, and created its first season of characters. While small at the time, it did garner praise for its combat and controls and still has an active competitive scene. Unfortunately, after its first season developer Double Helix was bought by Amazon and the games future was uncertain until a new studio came in to pull it back together.
Iron Galaxy took the reins from Double Helix and continued Killer Instinct for two more seasons worth of characters and content; including guest characters like: Arbiter from Halo, Rash from Battle Toads, and General Raam from Gears of War. Its success led it to be ported to PC, but after three seasons development has stopped on the game.
For years, fans have been advocating for more to be done with the game or franchise. This spawned the hashtag #BringBackKI, which was the communities rallying cry to Microsoft for more Killer Instinct. Fans even raised enough money to create a documentary about the game’s history from studio HoldBacktoBlock, which tells the games early arcade beginnings, troubled development, and the community that still plays it. This fervor for more Killer Instinct boiled over to when Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, was a guest on itmeJP’s podcast DroppedFrames, where (off script) itmeJP asked Phil about the game. Phil said that Killer Instinct was still in the minds of the Xbox team, but it needed the right developer in order to continue. For the longest time, that spark of hope was all the Killer Instinct community had until yesterday.
As mentioned before, Shpeshal_Nick on the XboxEra podcast revealed his information about Killer Instinct. Microsoft has seemingly found the developers they deemed to be fit to work on Killer Instinct, according to Nick it isn’t famous American fighting game studio NetherRealm Studio or Iron Galaxy (who denied they were working on it). In fact, Nick isn’t sure who it is, but is trying to learn. Still, with so little information it’s best to take this with a grain of salt due to its status as a rumor. But perhaps there is still hope for this fighting game to have its time in the spotlight once again.
Jonathan Sanchez
Article Team
