SNK Becomes Profitable Again, Preparing For More Fighting Games

SNK has had a history of making some of the better arcade-style games out there, like its Metal Slug series and its many fighting games, including King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown and others. But lately, it’s been seeing a bit of a drop in financial status, mainly due to its lack of too many new games. After all, its last one that was of noteworthy value was King of Fighters XIV, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything new on that front.

That looks like it’s changing, however. Game Informer recently reported that, per Gazette Magazine, the company has started to see a turnaround in profits, with 3.1 billion yen earned for the fiscal year of 2017. That’s a nice bounceback from 2016’s 558 million yen loss.

Part of that success is due to the many classic Neo-Geo games that the company is re-releasing on consoles through the Arcade Archives line-up, including titles like Magician Lord, Street Hoop (which just came out last week) and Samurai Showdown, amongst countless others. It intends to keep up this trend with a number of new releases through the end of this year and the beginning of next, including various classics that fans will want to check out again. (Fingers crossed on Top Hunter!)

With that, the publisher is also planning some other major fighting games to make the rounds, following in the footsteps of King of Fighters XIV. Yasuyuki Oda previously spoke about the future of the company, saying that “many new fighting games” were in development. He did tell fans to stay tuned for updates, so more than likely, we’ll see an announcement sooner rather than later. (Can we hope for a new Samurai Showdown? Yes. Yes, we can.)

There’s also the possibility that we could see additional content for King of Fighters XIV, given its current popularity on PlayStation 4 and PC. Nothing’s been finalized yet, but, again, Oda told us to stay tuned and see what announcements are to come.

Congrats to SNK on the return to form. Now, then, maybe they can tell us what Neo-Geo games are coming down the line for the Nintendo Switch, yeah?