the current era of gaming? as much as i agree that snk needs to "get with the times", the current era of gaming is a mixed bag of shit and turds and occasional drops of chocolate chip, but it's hard to make out which parts are the chocolate chip, and by that time you wouldn't even bother eating the chocolate because it's already touched a few turds.
current era of gaming somehow means trying to be more inviting to an audience that otherwise doesn't even care about games in the first place. i can understand trying to get a broader audience, but trying to feed the lowest common denominator? that's the mistake people tend to make these days, and it becomes nothing more than a mess of qte's and other safe-for-your-fingers mechanics that are supposed to bring in the people whose only gaming interest is sitting on a train and fiddling with angry birds or solitaire to pass the time. meanwhile, this alienates the core audience who fell in love with actually playing a game, and while a lot of these people end up biting the bullet, in the end, it just pleases nobody at all, because the casual audience didn't care in the first place and the company gave the middle finger to its "harder core" audience, and the company can't figure out where that happy medium is. and then you see floods of people bitching about it on youtube.
i'm fed up with snk's business strategy just the same, but not for the exact same reasons you are.
in order to accomplish the "expanded roster" AND updated graphics at the same time, this actually goes into discussing the "assembly line" where the more that's in demand is inversely proportional to the quality with respect to set deadlines, which unfortunately mires a lot of company products COUGH sf x tekken. people can do one or the other or they can spend a lot of time doing both, but "the current era of gaming" involves strict deadlines, unfortunately, and if these deadlines seem a little fussy,
you can take that up with the company board room.
yeah, they can spend a lot of time on a game, but if their budget can't afford a long production time, they can't accommodate as easily as you might want them to, and anyone who's ever worked in a business before would feel this more. this involves having to take up side projects to make up for lost money on building a project that's taking them a long time, thus possibly costing them more in the long run.
on the other hand, what you are probably asking for is for them to pump out something in 3d, which is in fact the demand of the "current era of gaming" and 3d modeling is inexpensive, easy to produce, flexible, and
still recyclable!
the best snk can do is try to keep its current audience, however small, and little by little, give a little wave to other people in hopes that they notice.
and bigger roster doesn't always mean the better game. in fact, you can tell that the bigger roster in some games has become inversely proportional to the quality of integration. with respect to deadlines.
there's a reason people say that "king of fighters xiii", despite being one of the easier kof games to play, is the "more honest" fighting game of this generation.