

The King of Fighters XI © 2005 SNK Playmore.
In this installment of the The King Of Fighters series. The character roster has received a major shake-up. For the first time ever, fan favorites Mai Shiranui, Leona Heidern, Robert Garcia and Joe Higashi have been dropped from the roster. The Princess of Punch team franchise has been dissolved. Eiji returns after being absent since KOF 95, the ever popular Duck King makes his first real appearance in the series, and Bonne Jenet crosses over from Garou - Mark of the Wolves. 3 new characters have been introduced to the series, Oswald, Elisabeth, and Momoko. Elisabeth is the heir of a noble French family, Oswald is a fighter from Ireland who utilizes cards as his weapons. Momoko is a young capoeira fighter from Japan accompanying Athena Asamiya and Sie Kensou on the Psycho Soldier team.

The King of Fighters XI (KOF XI) was released in October 2005.
KOF XI marks the first time in the main series (rather than the spin-offs KOF NeoWave and KOF Maximum Impact) where a game has not been released a year after the previous game. SNK/Playmore never released a game in the main series during the year 2004, which would leave a gap between KOF 2003 and what this game could've potentially be named KOF 2005. Thus, the company did away with the yearly trend and instead named KOF XI, being the 11th game in the main series. This game also breaks the trend of the main series running on the Neo-Geo MVS hardware and instead runs on Sammy's Atomiswave hardware.
At release time, arcade rooms were receiving competition massively worldwide for this game.
Leona, Ralph and Clark are playable characters in the Foma 90x Series Mobile Phones game 'Metal Slug Survivors'.
Scitron released a 2-CD limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (The King of Fighters XI Sound Collection - SCDC-517) on 24/03/2006.
Sony PS2 (jan.19, 2007) "SNK Best Collection: The King of Fighters XI [Model SLKA-25167]"