If there’s one gaming franchise that Warner Bros. can generally rely on to perform well, it’s Mortal Kombat. Sure, the fighting franchise has had its fair share of ups and downs over the years, but there’s a reason that it has grown into arguably the biggest fighting game franchise around, having delivered a number of stellar, standard setting fighting games over the course of multiple decades. In fact, the last decade and a half or so has been almost a second golden age for Mortal Kombat, with the franchise having hit a rich vein of form ever since it rebooted itself in 2009, following which it has generally enjoyed widespread critical acclaim and commercial success with each of its outings.
With Mortal Kombat 1, however, things seem decidedly different. After Mortal Kombat 11 came out, received extensive post launch support, and effectively brought the seriesSports Betting’ ongoing narrative arc to a conclusive end, most assumed that MK would be put on the backburner for a while. Make no mistake, this is and always has been one of Warner Bros’ biggest gaming properties, so not for a second did anything think that Mortal Kombat 11 was the end of the series by any stretch of the imagination- but for many, the assumption was that NetherRealm Studios would take the opportunity to once again alternate between two active franchises, and give us Injustice 3.
But now, more than a year on from its launch, it’s clear that Mortal Kombat 1 represents a bit of a rare slump for the franchise. That’s not to say the game suffered poor reviews or sales- at least not in absolute terms. On paper, with a mid-80s aggregate score and over 4 million units sold as of August, on paper, Mortal Kombat 1 might not seem like a failure by any means- but there’s little doubt that it has backslid from where the franchise was until not too long ago. Mortal Kombat 11, for instance, had managed to sell 8 million units within roughly a year and a half of its launch, which means Mortal Kombat 1 is selling at a significantly slower rate.
It’s selling poorly enough, in fact, that WB Games has allegedly decided to take drastic action. Though NetherRealm Studios has supported Mortal Kombat 1 with plenty of post launch content in the form of a dozen DLC characters, several Kameo fighters, and a story expansion with Khaos Reigns, it seems like that’s going to be it. Known Mortal Kombat insider FateUnknown recently claimed that though NetherRealm had initially planned on releasing a third year’s worth of additional DLC fighters and another story expansion for Mortal Kombat 1, due to the poor sales of the aforementioned Khaos Reigns expansion, WB Games has decided against it.
Clearly, interest in Mortal Kombat is currently uncharacteristically low- and looking at Mortal Kombat 1 and everything around it, it’s not hard to understand why. And that’s not just because of the fact that back-to-back Mortal Kombat releases might just have ended up being too much Mortal Kombat for some (and that’s not even counting both games’ post launch content).
One of the most common criticisms for this new Mortal Kombat timeline has ben related to its story, with this proving to be another instance of a multiverse story attempting to chase a trend that the general audience has actually grown sick of by now. It’s fair to say that the very concept of a multiverse story has worn out its welcome over the years (thanks primarily to Marvel and the many imitators it inspired), so to see Mortal Kombat falling into that trap has been disappointing for many. The storytelling in both Mortal Kombat 1 and Khaos Reigns has been roundly criticized, from the writing feeling too fanservice-y or major plot developments seeming rushed and underbaked to the general lack of stakes (thanks to the literally infinite clones of every character out there)- and that’s just scratching the surface.
And that’s not it, of course. Khaos Reigns in particular has received widespread criticism from the Mortal Kombat fanbase for more than a few reasons, on top of its narrative deficiencies, which we’ve already touched on. The expansion is too short, it’s priced to steeply relative to how much content it offers, and overall, doesn’t feel like the sort of comprehensive package that it needed to be after fans had already been left disappointed by the base game itself.
Unsurprisingly, Mortal Kombat 1’s monetization practices haven’t proven popular either. We touched on the overpriced Khaos Reigns expansion, but on top of that, similar controversies have also emerged thanks to the pricing of Fatalities, nickel and diming with alternate skins and announcer packs, and the sort of FOMO exploiting practices that we see in games all too often. Granted, aggressive montization is a growing epidemic in games in general (especially where fighting games are concerned), but for a game that has more than a few issues elsewhere, egregious monetization becomes harder to forgive, which is exactly the situation Mortal Kombat 1 finds itself.
To be entirely fair, the game itself has it’s fair share of strengths. From its typically top notch production values and its gorgeous visuals to the stellar fighting mechanics, Kameo system, and more, Mortal Kombat 1 has enough on offer to keep genre fans satisfied for a good amount of time. The problem, however, that expectations from Mortal Kombat generally tend to be higher, and with this outing, the series has definitely fallen short. The fact that it only spiraled further downward with the Khaos Reigns expansion did it no favours either. If it did indeed perform poorly and prompted a cancellation of future post launch plans for MK1, it wouldn’t surprise us.
What that means for the future of Mortal Kombat is the question that many will ask, though it seems safe to assume that the series’ future is secure, to say the least, even with this stumble taken into account. Just recently, WB Games confirmed that it was refocusing efforts on a narrower set of major gaming properties, and explicitly mentioned Mortal Kombat as one of them. Clearly, we’re going to see plenty more Mortal Kombat in the future.
What form that will take should be interesting to see. Mortal Kombat 1’s time in the sun seems to be done, which probably means we’re going to get a new instalment earlier than expected. How NetherRealm Studios will look to address the biggest narrative related complaints that many have had with MK1 and its expansion remains to be seen, but clearly, the developer is going to have to do something. Does that something involve taking a break from the series, developing Injustice 3, and then going back to Mortal Kombat in the aftermath? I, for one, wouldn’t mind that in the slightest- hell, I’d prefer it. We’ve had an unbroken string of several consecutive years of Mortal Kombat activity, so maybe the smart decision now would be to avoid fatigue and burnout and maybe let something else shine for a while.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
