Mortal Kombat 1: Definitive Edition was announced just last month. Based on the history of NetherRealm Studios, this seemed like a surefire sign that official post-launch support for the game had been concluded.
Indeed, NetherRealm Studios officially confirmed that they were finished with releasing DLC characters and story chapters for Mortal Kombat 1, though balance patches were still on the table. Regardless, the majority of NetherRealm Studios staff will now be focused on the development of the next project.
This is similar to what happened with Mortal Kombat 11. As the developers didn’t want fans to keep their hopes up for nothing, they eventually outright confirmed that their support of Mortal Kombat 11 through DLC was finished. They had also revealed that they had moved on to their next project, which we now know was Mortal Kombat 1 all along.
“It’s not like when we finish a game, we go ‘What are we going to do next?’ we decided what we were going to do a long time ago.” — Ed Boon
Of course, Ed Boon has said before that NetherRealm Studios’ next project was decided upon a long time ago. At this point, these plans have likely been finalized with post-launch development for Mortal Kombat 1 officially wrapping up.
“It’s not like when we finish a game, we go ‘What are we going to do next?’ we decided what we were going to do a long time ago,” said Boon on the topic.
“The next game hasn’t been announced, I’d love to give you that exclusive, but I’d probably get in big trouble. We’re supporting Mortal Kombat 1 with additional characters and what not, and we’re planting seeds for the next game.”
Since the inception of NetherRealm Studios as a subsidiary studio of Warner Bros. Games, it could be observed that the development team would follow a pattern of releasing a Mortal Kombat entry followed by a game in the Injustice series. It went from Mortal Kombat 9 to Injustice: Gods Among Us, then Mortal Kombat X, then Injustice 2, and then Mortal Kombat 11.
However, this pattern was broken when NetherRealm Studios announced Mortal Kombat 1 as their next game after Mortal Kombat 11. As such, it’s been over eight years since Injustice 2 was released on May 9, 2017.
Logically, this means that “Injustice 3” is set to be NetherRealm Studios’ next game project, right? While this does seem like one of the more likelier possibilities, it’s not a guarantee just yet.
First off, it’s important to note that Mortal Kombat has been more successful than the Injustice franchise. Considering the financial flops of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and MultiVersus, Warner Bros. Games might push NetherRealm Studios in the direction that is likely to be the most successful and profitable.
Rumors suggest that plans for additional post-launch support for Mortal Kombat 1 were cut short due to the disappointing performance of the Khaos Reigns story expansion. Despite this, Mortal Kombat 1’s reported 5 million sales is nothing to scoff at for a fighting game.
Does this mean that NetherRealm Studios could be working on a sequel to Mortal Kombat 1, titled as either “Mortal Kombat 2” or “Mortal Kombat 13”? NetherRealm Studios doesn’t necessarily have to be working on a fighting game.
We’ve recently seen that Ed Boon himself has had an interest in revisiting the Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks formula. Of course, most fans apparently would prefer a remaster over a sequel.
Speaking of remasters, Boon is also adamant that a remastered Mortal Kombat collection was destined to happen someday. This recently came to pass with the announcement of the Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection, but it’s hard to imagine that this is all that NetherRealm Studios is working on at the moment.
More than likely, it’ll probably be a few years before we even hear from NetherRealm Studios again about this next project. We’ll just have to wait until then while speculating on what we could be in store for next.