Netcode, Netcode... for me, it's a non-factor on purchase. I've wanted to play THIS game long enough, I'm getting it regardless. That's the most important factor to purchase.
Who will I play with, if it's bad? The most decent connections I can, and also my brother, and much more rarely, a few friends I'm still locally near.
It's not that I don't care about other games coming out in Oct/Nov. I'll be able to get a few of them, still, and KoF is still my most important of them all.
All I got tighters for in the past, was to play with family and immediate friends. Then, when I had friends around who wanted to try them, I had this great collection. And fighters "depreciate" a lot slower than other multiplayer genres, generally (as long as they don't release the odd same-year update...), so having a fighter from 2 years ago might still be worthwhile.
Even to this day, I have the occassional ok match on Garou XBL, very fun ones on 2k2UM XBL, and I played Neowave on XB360 almost as long as it supported it.
Fantastic netcode would be much preferred. But it won't prevent anyone from finding some good matches. It'll just make it much harder to find more of them. But I think it'd still be worth it.
I wonder, if SNKP made a standout-fantastic netcode, if they'd possibly try to sell it to other (non Arcsys?) companies, or sign smaller doujin fighters for XBLA or something using their ever-developing code? There should be so many possible great reasons for them to truly be trying to develop great netcode...