King of Fighters XII in July

Sprites are out, high resolution fighters with fluid animations are in.

Ignition Entertainment and SNK Playmore today announced that The King of Fighters XII will be released worldwide on Xbox 360 and PS3 in July.

The 3-on-3 fighting game series returns, celebrating its 15th Anniversary in style with a complete graphical overhaul. The series' character sprites used over the past 14 years are gone, replaced with all-new, high-resolution fighters fluidly animated against 100 per cent hand-drawn backgrounds.

"Our development slogan for KOFXII is "KOF Re-Birth" and we've aimed to create an entirely new King of Fighters game. To make this a truly unique fighting game, we've revolutionized the graphics by creating state of the art visuals - and made no compromises in that process whatsoever," said Masaaki Kukino, SNK Playmore.

Ignition will be releasing screens, trailers and more details at a later date.