Killer Instinct’s limited character roster suited to the modern gamer, MS says

Free-to-play Xbox One fighter Killer Instinct won’t have an expansive character roster. And rightly so, argues Microsoft.

"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," Microsoft producer Torin Rettig told Polygon.

"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.

Killer Instinct will be free to download and include one playable character from the off. Players can these choose to pay for additional characters. Developers Double Helix has also confirmed that a Season pass will be made available that unlocks all the content for a single fee.

"As much or as little as you want,” Rettig added. 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."