There are several different fighting franchises on the market with behemoths like Street Fighter and Tekken currently leading the pack. However, retro gamers will know that Mortal Kombat has long been one of the most iconic fighting franchises to ever hit the market.
The latest title to hit the current generation of consoles is Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe but if you weren’t aware, NetherRealm Studios is currently hard at work on a reboot of the franchise for the Xbox 360 and PS3 simply dubbed Mortal Kombat. While the game isn’t set to hit store shelves until April 19th, it was just made known today that a demo of the game will be hitting the PlayStation Network later this month. PlayStation Plus subscribers will be getting preferential treatment here with access to the demo on March 8th while normal PSN users will grab the demo on March 15th. As for the Xbox 360, there is currently no word on when a demo will be released for Microsoft’s console.
Again, Mortal Kombat is currently set to hit store shelves for the Xbox 360 and PS3 on April 19th of this year.
According to The Wrap, the next Mortal Kombat movie (not that we need another one, considering the utter crap the others were), has been put on hold because Threshold Entertainment has sued Warner Bros, claiming they had a licensing agreement with Midway before the very same Midway was acquired by Warner Bros. We hope it becomes a long, long legal battle, as we’d really not wanna see another horrible Mortal Kombat adaptation.
Midway’s been in deep water for some time now but finally Warner Bros. has picked them up and acquired all of their assets. But one question remains, what will the studio be called?
It was previously thought that Midway would just cease to exist and now operate under the Warner Bros. brand. However, Midway exec Geoff Mogilner was quoted to have said the following:
The name and the mark are owned by Warner Bros. and it is up to them to figure out the branding strategy.
Well Warner Bros., as long as you come out with a new Mortal Kombat game, we’ll call it even.
Read (Joystiq)
When it first began, DLC seemed more like an experiment into how much extra companies could charge for new content than anything else, but these days it’s almost a guarantee for any major release. Though it might not have gotten the acclaim of most other titles in the series, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe performed well enough to warrant some DLC of its own.
Unfortunately this won’t ever see the light of day due to the financial stumblings of Midway and their buy-out by Warner Bros. Ed Boon posted a render for sorceror Quan Chi onto his personal twitter account with the commentary “Excited about MK9 and WB, but wish we could have released DLC for MKvsDC”. Due to the abbreviated nature of twitter there aren’t any more details but with a huge roster of Mortal Kombat characters who hadn’t made the cut we’d probably have seen a fair number of fan favorites added to the list.
If you’ve been following the happenings at Midway you’ll know the company is in dire straits, facing bankruptcy following the failure of Wheelman to pull in the money they needed to keep things going. Recently Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment swooped in with a $33 million dollar offer to acquire most of the company, including of course the Mortal Kombat franchise, undoubtedly the only reason to really put up the cash to acquire the company.
Larry Kasanoff has filed a lawsuit on behalf of himself and his company, Threshold Entertainment claiming that in 1993 Midway granted him the rights in perpituity to the film and TV license for the series. Unfortunately for Kasanoff the clauses in his contract don’t actually grant that; his argument says that they ‘amount to the same thing’. He goes on to claim that Mortal Kombat is much more a product of Threshold than Midway since they claim that the characters in the video games were simply flat, stock archetypes who were developed into actual characters by the production company in the various films and tv series. That of course ignores all the inconsistencies between the depictions of the characters in their films and television series, not to mention that the film takes a certain degree of story-related artistic license. In the film both Kano and Shang Tsung are killed, while as established in game canon by Mortal Kombat II (released two years before the film) Kano was a captive of Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung was still living.
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It might not have been the first game to bring blood and gore to the fledgling world of video game consoles, but Mortal Kombat did so in an incredibly stylistic way whose influence can still be felt years later. The series has been less than impressive in the last few years offerings however and many fans were unimpressed by Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Many companies like DC are protective of their characters and don’t want them being brutalized quite like the characters in the MK universe do to each other with every installment.
That and a desire to appeal to a more universal crowd left the title firmly ensconced in the “T for Teen” rating category. This time around they’re bringing things back to the “M for Mature” camp. Today series creator Ed Boon twittered: “”Motion capturing special moves & fatalities today… they are kind of sick !!”. He went on to insist that ”People want an M-rated MK… dammit we will give them an M-rated MK.” He said they didn’t know where the line was between M and AO, but they didn’t want to ‘kross’ it. (He used the K, not me.)
Game publisher Midway has received an offer from Warner to acquire the bankrupt company, its assets and all its debts for $33 million. If successful, Warner would take over many of the popular license like Mortal Combat.
However, the deal will not include Midway-owned studios in San Diego and Newcastle. Midway confirmed that the offer has been made and will have 30 days to consider. The company also noted that several other buyers might be interested, although no formal offers have been made.
The internal Midway team responsible for the Mortal Kombat series is looking to leave the company, according to this Kotaku report.
The team, whose latest output was Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, is currently in talks with other publishers to relocate. Apparently, all this stems from Midway failing to pay out bonuses for meeting the game’s sales targets.
Midway representatives claim that the unsecured creditors committee is holding up the payments. The company recently announced that it plans on selling the franchise, though no further announcements were made.
Midway’s financial struggles aren’t exactly anything new, but what they are doing is quite interesting: the company has proposed an incentive plan that would see employees receive bonuses for meeting certain goals, but in a rather illogical twist, they won’t reimburse ex-employees for unused paid time off.
Their plan outlined three specific plans. The first – which was recently accomplished – was to find a co-publisher for Wheelman (Ubisoft stepped up to the plate) which will see a $497,500 bonus given out to employees.
The other two plans are to sell the Mortal Kombat property to another company and submit a new reorganization plan. Either is worth $1,292,500.
This move is surprising because the MK property has been a best-selling franchise for the publisher since the original’s release back in 1992.
While all this is fine and dandy, the company is backtracking on its promises that employees would be paid for unused paid time off. The promises were made three days before its recent bankruptcy filing.
Despite the success of Midway’s holiday season the company has still been floundering under the crushing weight of over $240 million in debt. In that classic avoidance of ones own failures that often seems in complete contradiction of the capitalist system Midway has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. If this goes through the company will be allowed to enter a restructuring phase.
With Wheelman featuring Vin Diesel in the pipeline along with an as-yet unspecified Mortal Kombat title Midway could have enough steam to keep going after the restructuring period, but only time will tell for the developer.
