The King of Fighters XIV may seem far off from being on the PlayStations 4s of fans with its release date being set for a late summer release, but there is good news for those anticipating the latest installment in the KOF series. A demo version of the game will become available on the PlayStation store Tuesday July 19^th, this was confirmed by developer SNK Playmore at EVO 2016. The demo version of King of Fighters XIV will feature 7 out of the game’s 50 playable characters. The demo will also be limited to local multiplayer, not yet allowing players to explore the online capabilities that will be available when the full version of the game is released later this summer.

During the same EVO panel, SNK Playmore discussed King of Fighters XIV’s online cooperative multiplayer option. This option will allow players to compete against each other in 6 versus 6 combat, each team consisting of 3 players. There will also be an “Online Training” option. This function will allow more experienced players to teach more novice players the mechanics of the game. This feature is an interesting attempt at building a friendlier and cooperative community around the game and it will be interesting to see how it will work in detail once the game has officially been released and gone online. Overall based on these portions of the recent King of Fighters XIV announcements it seems that the game has gone the direction of many other current video game franchises by putting focus on developing and coming up with new concepts around modern internet connectivity and online play.

King of Fighters XIV is currently available for preorder, we covered a few of the perks for preordered copies of the game here. The full version of King of Fighters XV will be released exclusively on the PlayStation 4 on August 23^rd in North America. King of Fighters XV also has release dates in Japan and Europe set for August 25^th and August 26^th respectively.