Microsoft Game Studios has explained the decision to make Xbox One’s Killer Instinct reboot free-to-play.
According to the publisher, the move was made in reaction to the way many fans play fighting games.
Those that download the game for free will only be able to play as the character Jago, while all the other characters will be sold as premium content.
“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.”
A Season Pass will allow players access to all of the game’s other characters. However, no pricing for either the Season Pass or individual characters has yet been revealed.
