It’s been around 11 months since Mortal Kombat 1 first hit the scene, and even with the Khaos Reigns expansion release on the horizon, there’s always the thought of “what comes next?”
NetherRealm Studios may well already be developing a big video game that’ll succeed MK1 at some point in the future.
While there’s obviously no official announcements on the matter as of yet, we can look at other avenues to get a feel of what’s going on at a game studio currently.
One such way is of course viewing a company’s job openings where NetherRealm has a few positions available of interest.
Perhaps the most telling one is the Associate Producer role, which includes the line of text in the job description of “be a part of the production team in the day-to-day management of a AAA title that NetherRealm Studios is working on.”
It doesn’t specify whether this is in reference to a new title that isn’t MK1 or a general statement for whatever NRS is currently working on though that’s not all.
They are also trying to hire a Senior Animator, who is said to be “responsible for creating consistent, high-quality cinematic animation for our story mode campaign.”
Considering Khaos Reigns is supposed to launch with its story mode expansion next month, a new hire wouldn’t really be working on that at this point so close to the finish line where the production should be almost complete already.
These listings combined point to NRS either trying to enter pre-production or are already starting early production on their next big game although this revelation isn’t all that surprising if you know much about game development.
With the growing scale and amount of time a AAA title takes to create in the current landscape, studios typically looking to enter pre-production or getting their next ideas off the ground shortly after their current product releases.
Many / most titles (and especially fighting games) do receive post-release support and DLC for potentially years afterwards, but those are generally handled by smaller teams while the bulk moves on to the new thing.
NetherRealm may keep more back than usual since they have a larger story expansion to release for the past few titles, but they’re obviously not just going to sit with MK1 forever.
It is also interesting to see this pop up now for a few other reasons considering NRS was recently hit with mass layoffs to its entire mobile team and shuttered Mortal Kombat Onslaught after just a year.
Moreover, Warner Bros. Discovery still finds itself in a pretty dire financial situation where they’re reportedly looking at selling off at least part of their gaming branch.
But despite this uncertainty around the future and previous staff reduction, NRS is still hiring and seemingly trying to put together their next endeavor.
As to what that will end up being is anybody’s guess since NetherRealm already broke their Mortal Kombat to Injustice release cycle with the current game.
Mortal Kombat 1 has been a success for Warner Bros. since it managed to sell more than 4 million copies in under a year, which puts it ahead of the direct competition of Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, but behind what Mortal Kombat 11 accomplished when it became the fastest selling and then best selling title in the franchise ever.
Ed Boon recently reaffirmed they plan to support Mortal Kombat 1 for “years,” and they’re currently only on year two.
So even if NetherRealm’s next game would already happen to be in full production, that doesn’t spell doom and gloom for MK1 at all.
Whatever they work on next likely won’t be revealed to the public for another three years or so and potentially even longer than that.
Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns is scheduled to launch on September 24, 2024.
