It’s pretty much always a really big event in North America when a new NetherRealm Studios fighting game launches, and this year was apparently no exception to that rule.
The NPD Group / Circana recently released the rankings for the top 20 best-selling games for September 2023 in the United States where Mortal Kombat 1 almost lived up to its name for it.
Liu Kang’s new timeline clocked in at number two overall for its first month on the market behind only Starfield.
Both figures are pretty impressive considering MK1 didn’t technically release until the 19th (though was available on early access the 14th) while Bethesda’s new RPG was out basically the whole month but as an Xbox and PC only game that was also available on Game Pass.
On top of that, MK1 also became the 8th best-selling title of all 2023 in the country thus far even beating out Resident Evil 4’s remake and Street Fighter 6, which now sits at 13th for 2023 in the U.S.
This does somewhat put MK1 a bit behind its predecessor considering Mortal Kombat 11 topped U.S. charts back in April 2019 (and even became the best selling game of the year for a time), but the new title’s competition was arguably more stiff this time around.
YTD ending September 2023 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games (Dollar Sales, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/OYxYSot5QE
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) October 18, 2023
Interestingly, this also marks the first time Street Fighter 6 hasn’t been on the NPD charts since its June launch where it began life ranked number 3 overall followed by 8th in July and then 13th in August.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has been absent the past couple months as well, which means its very consistent run for almost the past 5 years may finally be coming to an end.
Warner Bros. hasn’t stated how many copies MK1 has sold specifically, but it’s likely already in the millions considering they beat out the likes of EA Sports FC 24, Madden NFL 24 and Payday 3 in its first outing.
The game hopefully has a long and successful life ahead of it, but there’s still some fairly big issues Mortal Kombat 1 needs to sort out as well to truly do so.