Mortal Kombat 1 developer NetherRealm decided on its next game three years ago, Ed Boon has confirmed.
In a tweet, Boon said NetherRealm planned to support Mortal Kombat 1 “for a long time to come,” after an interview with ComicBook quoted the developer as saying “NetherRealm’s next game has been in development for three years.”
“Love the fact that there is excitement for our next game,” Boon later clarified. “And I don’t want to be a stickler for words…
“But we haven’t been working on our next game for three years already. The actual quote was that we knew what our next game was going to be three years ago.
“NetherRealm is still fully committed to supporting Mortal Kombat 1 for a long time to come.”
Boon’s comments come as NetherRealm releases the Khaos Rising expansion for Mortal Kombat 1. It adds new story mode chapters available from September 24, along with Kombat Pack 2, which itself includes six new DLC characters: Cyrax, Sektor, and Noob Saibot (available on September 24), and guest fighters Ghostface (Scream franchise), T-1000 (Terminator 2: Judgement Day), and Conan the Barbarian (post-launch release timing to be announced at a later date). Mortal Kombat 1 itself has sold over four million copies since launching in September 2023.
But what’s next? Most fans of the studio’s work expect it to release a third game in its DC fighting game franchise, although neither NetherRealm nor owner and publisher Warner Bros. has yet to confirm that. The first game in the series, Injustice: Gods Among Us, launched in 2013, with its sequel, Injustice 2, coming out in 2017. NetherRealm released Mortal Kombat 11 in 2019 and for a time it seemed like the studio would alternate between Mortal Kombat and Injustice games, but it went on to release another Mortal Kombat, the soft reboot that is Mortal Kombat 1, last year instead.
In an interview with IGN in June 2023, Boon spoke in vague terms about this decision. “There were a number of factors, some of which I can talk about, some of which I probably shouldn’t,” Boon said.
Two reasons Boon was willing to discuss were the unfortunate onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the team’s choice to switch to a newer version of the Unreal game engine (Mortal Kombat 11 runs on Unreal Engine 3, whereas Mortal Kombat 1 runs on Unreal Engine 4).
“But we did go to a new graphics engine, Unreal,” Boon said. “We really wanted to be careful with COVID and all that stuff and everybody staying safe. So there were a bunch of variables involved that eventually we realized, ‘Okay, let’s do another Mortal Kombat game and hopefully we’ll get back to the Injustice games.’ “
Just to be sure, we wanted to confirm with him directly that the door was not closed on the Injustice franchise.
“Not at all,” Boon answered.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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