Regardless of the year, Evo always manages to pack in at least one surprise announcement that leaves fans in the venue and watching from home completely stunned. The cause of global silence this time: Killer Instinct getting a massive update in the year of our Daisuke 2023.
During the 10-Year Anniversary Invitational for Killer Instinct 2013, the Evo team shared a trailer featuring people who worked on the game and then brought out Xbox’s head of Killer Instinct, James Goddard, for a surprise announcement.
What started as a typical thank you from all the developers and his team at Xbox quickly turned into something special as Goddard dropped the news that Iron Galaxy is returning to KI and working on a massive new update for the fall as part of that 10th-anniversary celebration.
“It’s unbelievable what I just saw [on stage] 10 years later,” Goddard said. “We shot to launch KI Season One [with] eight characters. We thought it was going to be cool and amazing. Who would have thought [we would see] 29 characters, 10 years, four incredible players, and two Evo Champions. You guys made this happen.”
As far as we know, this update won’t include any new characters or entirely fresh content, but the team is working on improving the game’s matchmaking services to make matches and tournaments run smoother for years to come. It will also include 4K support for Xbox Series X/S consoles.
The exciting part of a full balance patch? Players will hopefully be given a truly new meta to work with for the first time since the last patch for Killer Instinct: Definitive Edition dropped in August 2017. No details about what will actually be contained in this update were shared, but fans are already exploding with excitement.
Evo general manager Rick “TheHadou” Thiher was succinct on Twitter about the announcement, simply saying “Play Ki. Forever.” As teased by Maximillian Dood at Evo 2023, we can expect to hear more details about the update soon.
