What would you say a Game Producer does... For a company like SNK, especially? We're talking King of Fighters here. What exactly did he bring to the table?
I don't know what this guy in particular brought to the table. I'm mainly talking producers in general with relation to KoF in its current position and SNK in their current position.
With KoF XII and KoF XIII, i'm pretty sure they were very difficult games to make both because they are fighting games (a genre that not a lot of people know how to do well) and 2D with large and highly animated sprites (also a skill that seems to be getting more and more scarce). When dealing with something as specific as a next gen 2D sprite based KoF game, it seems you need a good team and good management (producer) to make sure things you don't end up wasting a lot of time and money on bullshit. I'm sure you know this but them sprites aren't cheap and they are time consuming as FUCK.
Yeah I know the next game probably isn't going to be 2D sprite based.
My point is that their hasn't been a mainline KoF game in nearly 4 years and they don't even have an in house KoF development team anymore. Hell SNK is barely even a game studio at this point and getting pretty far removed from active development. I'm sure they are getting rusty at this point I worry that this will impact development efficiency (mostly being forced to cut corners and shit like that). They actually have to seek out and assemble an entire team of people with the necessary know how for to make the game for them. Seems like having a good producer who has experience with the previous 2 entries in the series would have helped with that process immensely. Knowing what kind of people and situations to look out for and being prepared for them, what went wrong, what went right and what to do different this time.
Pretty sure talking out of my ass here but that's just how I feel.