Mortal Kombat 12 leaked during earnings call, expected to launch this year
Though we've yet to get anything in the way of an official trailer or announcement from Ed Boon or his team at NetherRealm Studios, we got word today that Mortal Kombat 12 will be releasing some time this year.
The information came from today's Warner Bros. Discovery earnings call, where CEO and president of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, mentioned the game's title directly while listing off some of the games they have slated for 2023.
"And there's lots more to come," says Zaslav during the stream, "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."
MORTAL KOMBAT 12 CONFIRMEDpic.twitter.com/QBb3nvJing
— 💙| Gui (@GuiLeena_) February 23, 2023
While extremely exciting, this news isn't all that surprising to those who have been following Mortal Kombat. NetherRealm Studios has been following something of a pattern of fighting game releases over the last decade, traditionally alternating between a Mortal Kombat and an Injustice title every few years.
We're now closing in on the four year anniversary of NRS' most recent release, Mortal Kombat 11, but series creator Ed Boon has been teasing and hinting (as he's prone to do) that the company's next game will either be Injustice 3 or MK12 and also that it likely won't be Injustice 3.
Talk of the next big Mortal Kombat has been increasingly common in fighting game social media circles in recent times, further indicating the collective itch the community has been feeling for a new entry.
The Mortal Kombat franchise celebrated its 30 year anniversary last year, but has seen a particularly successful stint since re-vamping back in 2011 with the aptly-named Mortal Kombat 2011 (often referred to as Mortal Kombat 9).
The bloody fighting series saw a return to two dimensional combat after more than a decade of operating in the three dimensional space. NetherRealm has since introduced a slew of new characters, a handful of which are descendants or pupils of franchise mainstays such as Sonya Blade, Johnny Cage, and Jax Briggs.
At this point we don't know when exactly Mortal Kombat 12 will be releasing, but this news does indicate that we'll likely be seeing Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and MK12 all in the same calendar year. 2023 is set to be an extremely good year for the fighting game community, to say the least.
We'll be keeping a keen eye out for official Mortal Kombat 12 announcement news, which feels now as though it could be coming at any time. We do know that Mortal Kombat 11 will have at least one last hurrah later this year as it was one of the eight titles revealed for the Evo 2023 lineup.
As of the writing of this article, neither Ed Boon nor NetherRealm Studios have made any public statements about Mortal Kombat 12's coming release nor the leak that happened today.
