It’s heartening (and in fact, downright admirable) to see developers biting the bullet and fixing buggy software, and that’s the case with SNK Playmore and their recently released game, The King of Fighters XII for both the PS3 and Xbox 360.

While the game’s online problems are pretty much all over the Internet, the following press release offers some solutions and also word about the next patch which will fix the rather, um, embarassing, freezing problem involving a certain character.

I hope that SNK Playmore will continue to be pro-active in supporting the game now that it is released after a 4-year development period. We wouldn’t want that to waste and disappoint the fans at the same time, do we now?

Dear King of Fighters XII fans,

This week’s launch of THE KING OF FIGHTERS XII represents the culmination of four years of hard work to deliver a rebirth for the KOF franchise, but several key issues have arisen since its release that must be addressed. Rest assured that SNK PLAYMORE is fully committed to supporting the King of Fighters XII community by working to further improve the gameplay experience.

We’re pleased to announce that the next software update will address the animation glitch that users have encountered in which Elisabeth’s character sprite becomes “frozen” for the duration of the round when the character Raiden performs a specific move on her.

While software update solutions are being devised, we can offer some tips to those users who are experiencing exceptionally poor online performance. First, we suggest limiting the number of players in a room to two, as the addition of a spectator with a slow connection can currently create latency for all users in the room. Also, if your Internet connection is configured behind a firewall using NAT Type 3, we recommend reconfiguring your setup to utilize NAT Type 1 (for PS3) or an “open” setting (for Xbox 360).

Also, we’d like to take this opportunity to explain one feature of the Xbox 360 version. When playing online with the Xbox 360 version of KOF XII, players who continually battle the same opponent in multiple Ranked Matches in the same lobby will not receive additional True Skill Rank Points. This is an intentional decision to keep players from abusing the system to reap massive rewards by preying on one player. If you want to earn True Skill Rank Points, you must make a new room or leave simply leave the room and come back.

-SNK Playmore