SNK vs. Capcom producer says "all sides" are interested in revival

Yasuyuki Oda, producer of SNK's The King of Fighters franchise, has admitted that there's a growing interest in bringing back the SNK vs. Capcom franchise. Speaking to Video Games Chronicle, Oda said that "everybody in all sides, in both parties," wanted to bring the series back.

Oda added that reactions to the SNK vs. Capcom posters featured at EVO 2022 "helped us reconfirm that that is probably one of the most wanted things from the fighting game community across the entire world."

SNK vs. Capcom was a series of crossover titles developed by Capcom and SNK that began in 1999. Primarily made up of fighting games, the series saw characters from the King of Fighters franchise fight characters from Street Fighter. 

This has yet to become anything definitive, stressed Oda, as no one at SNK has reached out to Capcom yet. But the EVO posters and their positive reception will serve as the first step to reviving the series. "20 years is definitely too long for me. We’ll try and get it done in 10!”

On Capcom's end, Capcom vs. SNK 2 director Hideaki Itsuno told Polygon in 2021 that he would love to "eventually" release a third entry. But that may be awhile, as Itsuno is currently directing Dragon's Dogma II. 

The more IP fighters, the stronger the fighting game community

Oda's comments about bringing back SNK vs. Capcom come at the right time. Earlier in August, Arc System Works CEO Minoru Kidooka expressed his belief that crossovers and IP will guide the future of the fighting game genre. 

"We need to expand fighting game communities through IP," said Kinkooda at the time. The Blazblue developer, according to him, is already "actively pushing" to collaborate with western companies to create more fighting titles.

Currently, the biggest IP fighting game would be MultiVersus from Warner Bros. and Player First Games. The game hit 20 million players last week, and it's continuing to have legs nearly a full month after release. 

Though SNK hasn't done a crossover game with Capcom in years, its characters have jumped into other fighting games. King of Fighters' Terry Bogard was added to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as a DLC character, and Geese Howard was added to Bandai Namco's Tekken 7.