Killer Instinct has been out of the limelight for a few years now, but just because we haven’t heard anything about the future of Microsoft’s fighting game franchise doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about it – or that they aren’t hoping to make more Killer Instinct games in the future. That’s according to Xbox boss Phil Spencer, who discussed how the franchise is viewed at Microsoft on the latest edition of the Dropped Frames podcast. The news was first spotted by VGC.
“There are so many good games in our catalogue that we’d love to visit,” Spencer said. “The response when we redid KI at the launch of Xbox One was fantastic.” Spencer continued, “I will just say, [Xbox Game Studios head] Matt [Booty] and I have discussed many times KI and where we would like to go with it and it’s not out of our minds that—it might be out of our minds—but it’s in our hearts and in our minds that we want to continue to do something with KI.”
Spencer stressed that finding ” right team and the right opportunity” was critical, but emphasized that Microsoft loved both the franchise and its community and that the lack of more Killer Instinct wasn’t because “any kind of lack of desire” on Microsoft’s part.
That part about the right team and the right opportunity sounds crucial. The 2013 Killer Instinct was developed by Double Helix. Season 2 and 3 of the game was handled by developer Iron Galaxy, the studio behind several excellent ports of classic Capcom games like Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike Online Edition, Marvel vs. Capcom Origins, and Darkstalkers Resurrection, after Double Helix was purchased by Amazon. Iron Galaxy has said it would consider working on Killer Instinct again if presented with the opportunity.