The rumor that KOF XIII would never see a console release
(and that SNK.P would stop creating games alltogether and instead focus entirely on Pachinko)
was created when that guy left.
It has now been dismissed as mere overexaggeration.
I don’t see how the balance will be identical to arcade version 1.1 when they’re specifically adding in new characters. I’d say new characters pretty much always changes the balance, unless they happen to all mostly suck (kinda like with Vanilla SF4).
the older characters will remain unchanged from a balance perspective. as long as they also take out the new bugs from 1.1 im good, fuck rebalancing, just give me yamazaki (and prefferable oswald).