Mortal Kombat 1 was...successful??

Let's go. So, uh, the big news is that Mortal Kombat 1, as you know, somewhat detested of a game it is in the eyes of many, goes on to sell even more than the majority of Street Fighter games. Street Fighter 6, majority of Capcom games. Yeah, they hit 8 million sold, which just goes to show how big their audience is. Like how massive the audience for Netherrem and Mortal Kombat is. It's big, dude. That's an absolute massive amount of sales. Most of their fighting games are discounted in the same time frame that MK1 was also discounted. You know, it just means that the competitive side of it isn't necessarily staying around. Does it have a thriving competitive scene? No. But that doesn't always constitute what is a successful. By many accounts, this would be considered a failure. And I don't know how that's possible. I don't know if MK1 costs that much. It definitely was not doing the right things when it came out. And they tried a lot to make it better over time, but it was still a big issue. And also, comparatively speaking, I think this is selling half as much as the more successful Mortal Kombat game. So, this might be a bit closer in line to the sales that they were seeing with Injustice titles like Injustice 1 and Injustice 2. Uh maybe, you know, just maybe, but that's currently within a lesser period of time selling more than Street Fighter 6. What's funny is that this argument sucks. Oh, which game is more successful? Which game is less successful? Did this cost more money to make than that? Like, if there is no Steam charts for it, then it actually has failed. If it is doesn't have the big competitive scene that it has done bad like whatever your I would say definition of success is you will use that as your defining element when arguing about a game's like actual success right where you're like hey didn't sell 16 million failure of a game didn't even come close to the sales of a Smash Brothers failure of a game doesn't have as many players as Tekken 8 failure of a game it's like this this logic can be applied to anything just to make your point more substantial. 8 million is a [ __ ] ton just for the sake of what NRS did with MK1. Maybe not meeting the expectations of previous games, which is why it didn't hit those goals and stuff. And 8 million for a fighting game is insane, bro. Like only the most reserved of games like over time, like even Dragon Ball Fighters or games that are around for seven maybe eight years. Yeah, maybe they'll eventually get to a point as they've been around for that long to actually hit those numbers. Funny enough, we just recently saw in the Street Fighter 6 world that according to Steam charts, which is not an appropriate metric. It seems like Street Fighter 6 maybe, just maybe, had the highest player count it's ever had. Like, no kidding, after Alex came out potentially. We don't know the numbers for console, which I'm thinking is going to be a thing that sort of removes this argument. But the most people that have logged in and played Street Fighter was when that Alex update came out. That's crazy. That does not happen, man. Most fighting games in the first few weeks of it being out, that's when it eclipses and gets its highest number of players usually. So, the fact that Street Fighter was able to get a really high player base when Akuma came out, which made the most sense, and now an even higher player base a couple of weeks ago because Alex came out and there was a big there was a big time frame in between and a balance patch and all this stuff, dude. Like, a ton of people showed up to play this [ __ ] which is really crazy. Also helps the fact that Street Fighter 6 is just selling very well. It's selling faster than most Street Fighter games like ever have. So, that's all really good news. This is good news for Mortal Kombat 1. People say if is discounted, dude. Street Fighter is also mega discounted at times. You can get Street Fighter for mad cheap at times. Like that is not the argument here. The argument is that just even reaching a figure like that regardless of discounts is tough. If that was the case and every single game was dropped down to five bucks, you would think that it would sell an absolute metric [ __ ] ton, right? Actually, no. Even if the game is good, even if you drop the price a a ton, it does not mean that the game is always going to be reaching a five plus million units sold situation. It just it just does not happen that way. Do I think MK1 deserves high sales? No, probably not. I don't think it's story mode stuff was super captivating. I do find that the gameplay is the most enjoyable of all of them, but gameplay is not what sells people on Mortal Kombat games, which is why I hope the devs just go gameplay crazy. Like like so many weird things in the in the past three games that NRS has released are weirdly consolidated gameplay-wise where it's like it's obvious where this is going to go and you're going to open it up. Like why is this so neutered at launch like why is the last game that felt like it was like you're giving characters the an ability to do a lot of really cool things was effectively Mortal Kombat X. I hope what this means is that like even in a situation where even if a game is not received well 8 million units sold is still an astronomical amount. Does it mean that they're going to do everything the exact same because man that number is so high that means that the next Mortal Kombat MK13 MK versus DC whatever is going to copy most things from MK1. No. No, I don't think so. I don't though. In fact, I'm surprised that it hit that. I'm actually really surprised that it even got there with a few of the things that I enjoy about the game. I'm still kind of shocked that they even hit that amount cuz it seemed like it was a lot more dire than this figure was representing. The game hasn't even been out three years, dude. Anyway, I'm really happy to see what's happening around the fighting game space right now with fighting game successes. Tekken has effectively stalemated where we haven't heard much about the game sales beyond a 3 million unit mark, but Street Fighter 6 continues to sell very well. A lot of the Capcom fighting collections and things like that that came out, I heard did very well as well, which is very surprising and actually really damn cool. I have hopes for the future where I think games like 2x KO can have a supportive hopeful future like multi multi-year development support ahead of it where I hope even games that are like kind of smaller games like Invincible Versus to a certain degree and Avatar even smaller and then the big boys like Toecon I hope they all do good and I want these things to do bad because all of these games I have personal investment in you know what I mean? Guilty Gear is another big one where it's like I wonder how long this can go. Are they going to keep doing this? Because obviously it has been successful and obviously it's about to turn into a big new game that a lot of people are pretty excited about or you know reluctant or curious at the time of recording this. There's a lot of like hopeful stuff on the future and not a much not much that's going on like beyond all of this. All I got to say is that like I like celebrating when games do well. And yeah, MK1 doing well to a degree makes me happy because this game has some of the most fun NRS characters I've ever played. Dude, it just does. Some of the most enjoyable characters I have ever played in an NRS game. It's stifled a little bit because it's so goddamn slow. But still, I've had a lot of fun with this, you know, over the years it's been out and it didn't catch me like an MKX, but I played more of MK1 than I did Injustice 2 and I also did of Mortal Kombat 11. It was just more fun to play. In the space of MK and Street Fighter, it's very good to hear that they're doing well. But it doesn't mean that they can't learn from it. That does not mean that we want everything to stay the same and it's all sunshine and rainbows, nothing changed. Uh, if anything, we we're allowed to celebrate the game's successes, but also criticize how things uh are in the moment because it can get better. Like, no [ __ ] Stuff actually can get better in terms of like Mortal Kombat especially, and even what's happening with Street Fighter right now. Need some shifts, right? We need some shakeups.