Image: WB Games
A new Mortal Kombat game is coming out this year.
Mortal Kombat 12 has been confirmed, unbeknownst to its creators at NetherRealm Studios. During a Warner Bros. Discovery investor call this week, CEO David Zaslav revealed to investors that the highly anticipated fighting game is due for release in 2023.
The announcement was made with hilariously little fanfare, considering Mortal Kombat’s games studio NetherRealm has been famously tight-lipped about the games it currently has in development. The studio has been consistently switching between making sequels in its Mortal Kombat and Injustice franchises for years now, so many speculated that Injustice 3 would be its next game in development. It appears that this isn’t the case.
Zaslav took a beat during the investor call to praise the success of the WB Games department, starting with the smash hit of Hogwarts Legacy, which has already sold more than 12 million copies in a mere two weeks, racking up $850 million in company revenue. For comparison, Elden Ring took a year to sell 20 million copies. Then Zaslav confirmed that more games are coming from the company:
… And there's lot more to come, including the highly anticipated Mortal Kombat 12 and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, games also set for release this year, with ambitious launch projections.
NetherRealm and Rockstar Games share the same playbook when it comes to announcing new games: both studios say practically nothing until a year or just a few months before launch, and then finally let the marketing machine loose. The fighting game studio recently found a solid rhythm in making new entries for its Injustice and Mortal Kombat franchises one after another, but it stuck with Mortal Kombat 11 for quite a bit longer due to its success. The studio even released an expansion in 2020 with multiple new fighters, before finally ending its DLC support.
With a sequel to the Mortal Kombat film in the works and the proven success of the franchise at large, NetherRealm might want to get going on a sequel as soon as possible. Mortal Kombat 11 even ended on a good point for newcomers to jump onto the next game: the story ended with a universe-wide soft reboot, resetting decades-spanning stories and events to begin a fresh new era for its characters.
Whatever the case, NetherRealm likely didn’t expect to have its next game outed like this. The studio showed up at The Game Awards to announce Mortal Kombat 11 in the most dramatic way possible, so having its sequel announced via investor call is a tad anticlimactic, to say the least.
It’s going to be a great year for fighting game fans. Street Fighter 6 launches in June, Tekken 8 could launch later in the year and we’ll probably hear more about Riot Games’ League of Legends fighting game in the months ahead.
