NetherRealm Studio’s rocky first year with Mortal Kombat 1 has been underscored by the release of the Evo 2024 entrant numbers as the fighting game community has been avidly pointing to the game’s relatively low entrant numbers as yet another sign of its failure to meet expectations.
Mortal Kombat 1 needs some fine tuning, to be sure, but with so many content creators and social media users highlighting the fact that the game has only garnered 645 competitors for the big dance this year, we wanted to see what the wider context looks like. We’ve gone back and grabbed entrant numbers for Mortal Kombat games at Evo over the last decade to see just how bad, relatively speaking, this year is for the franchise.
First off, not all years are equal as one would expect somewhat higher numbers for a fighting game’s first Evo. Street Fighter 6, for instance, saw a whopping 7061 entrants for its debut year in 2023, and that number has dropped by nearly two grand to 5265 here in 2024 despite the game roaring ahead with plenty of palpable momentum.
With this being Mortal Kombat 1’s first trip to the big dance, there’s reason to believe this will be the strongest showing it sees (if it even comes back).
That said, 645 is nearly 200 more entrants than predecessor Mortal Kombat 11 saw in either 2022 or 2023, albeit MK11 was three and four years old during these performances.
The relative size of Evo is also constantly growing, and so we also noted the top game entrant numbers for each year and calculated the percentage the Mortal Kombat entry has in relation. So for 2024 MK1 has 645 (12%) of top game Street Fighter 6’s 5265 entrants.
• Evo 2024 – MK1* – 645 (12% of top game Street Fighter 6’s 5265)
• Evo 2023 – MK11 – 449 (6% of top game Street Fighter 6’s 7061)
• Evo 2022 – MK11 – 464 (21% of top game Guilty Gear Strive’s 2161)
• Evo 2021 – MK11 (Online, no participation from Asia region) – 714 (21% of top game Guilty Gear Strive’s 3456)
• Evo 2020 – Evo Cancelled due to Covid-19
• Evo 2019 – MK11* – 1567 (45% of top game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s 3492)
• Evo 2018 – No MK at Evo
• Evo 2017 – No MK at Evo
• Evo 2016 – MKX – 707 (14% of top game Street Fighter 5’s 5065)
• Evo 2015 – MKX* – 1162 (52% of top game Street Fighter 4’s 2227)
• Evo 2014 – No MK at Evo
• Evo 2013 – MK9 – 233 (15% of top game Street Fighter 4’s 1601)
* Denotes first Evo for particular MK entry
While 12% isn’t the worst showing of the recent years Mortal Kombat has been at Evo, it certainly is for an first showing as the previous two entries saw substantially more relative Evo interest and engagement during their initial runs.
We should also note the fact that Evo more heavily represents the competitive fighting game scene, and that Mortal Kombat is appreciated by the casual crowd to a considerably higher degree than most of the other titles at Evo.
Both Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 sold over 10 million copies each, significantly more than any other title at Evo save for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Mortal Kombat 1 sold 3 million in its first two months, but as has proven the case with Evo entrants, may not live up to the standards its predecessors set.