Don't kount the gory fighter out just yet.
According to NetherRealm creative director Ed Boon, Mortal Kombat 1 sales have gone from around 3 million copies to over 5 million since its September 2023 launch, and the studio will "keep trucking forward" with new "Kontent."
"Seeing Mortal Kombat 1 still in the top 15 most played Playstation 5 games makes us very grateful to fans," he continued. "Thanks for continuing to support our games!" The sales marker offers industry watchers some sense of how the game is performing for NetherRealm and parent company Warner Bros. Games.
In recent months, rumors claimed NetherRealm would wrap support for Mortal Kombat 1 after its current Kontent Pack. Boon's "trucking" statement seems to partially pour water on that, though at time of writing, neither he or NetherRealm have fully said what's next. The fighting game just got its 11th DLC fighter, Conan the Barbarian, earlier this week, and NetherRealm released the Khaos Reigns story expansion last year.
For some comparison, the studio's support for its prior games has been quite extensive, driving revenue for it and its publisher: Mortal Kombat 11 had 12 DLC characters spread across three Kontent Packs and a post-launch story campaign when all was said and done. Injustice 2 had no such expansion, but had a similar 12 character, three-pack model.
Shortly after Mortal Kombat 1's launch in 2023, WB Discovery head David Zaslav praised it and Hogwarts Legacy's sales. The two were quite successful compared to the company's 2024 output, which was mainly a cascading series of losses following the lackluster release of Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
During an earnings call last November, WBD made clear it wanted to focus on four particular franchises for its game ventures: Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and DC Comics. However, that statement came months after NetherRealm cut staff and shut down its mobile spinoff, Mortal Kombat: Onslaught.
The company's comments indicate that another Mortal Kombat game is likely, helped by a new movie based on the series releasing this October. However, it's currently unclear if NetherRealm will jump into a sequel after this game wraps, or return to its DC Comics-based Injustice series.
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