Bad news if you're looking forward to playing SNK's Samurai Shodown with rollback netcode: you'll have to wait a little bit longer. The studio has pushed back the game's rollback netcode update, which was originally slated to arrive in spring, to sometime in summer, but it's not all bad news.
On Twitter, SNK says that its first community beta test offered "great insight" regarding what needed to be improved before rollback netcode could be implemented. However, the developer says "various setbacks and extenuating circumstances" during development have led to the decision to push back the Samurai Shodown rollback netcode update to late summer.
To soften the blow somewhat, SNK is planning another Samurai Shodown community beta test for rollback netcode sometime this month. The studio says it will share more information as soon as it becomes available, so be sure to keep an eye out for another chance to test out the game's rollback framework.
If you're not familiar with rollback netcode, it's essentially a system that allows fighting games to minimize lag while you're playing online. In technical terms, rollback netcode effectively predicts what players' next inputs are going to be, shifting whenever its prediction is incorrect. We're talking individual frames here, though, so rollback netcode can get pretty accurate.
Since the system's prediction is usually correct, games with rollback netcode often feel smoother and more responsive online, even when either player is suffering from lag. Rollback netcode is used by many fighting games, including Street Fighter 6, Arc's BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, and more. It's not used by every fighting game out there, though; famously, there's still no rollback netcode in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, for instance.
Samurai Shodown is available right now on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. The rollback netcode update for the game is scheduled to arrive sometime in late summer, and the next beta phase for rollback netcode will take place in June. Stay tuned to TechRaptor for more info on Samurai Shodown and all other things fighting game-related.
