Multi-national releases are a difficult process. Not only are there linguistic and cultural barriers to overcome, but very often content or simple monetary reasons can keep a game from entering one country or another. Even so, some games are desired despite their limited availability no matter where you are.
Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe‘s roster of “kombatants” was missing some key names on both sides. That was something series co-creator Ed Boon and the MK team had hoped to address with downloadable content, which never happened.
Midway shipped more than 1.8 million copies of Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe worldwide for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the company announced today.
Want to pummel the creators of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe senseless? Franchise co-creator Ed Boon and members of the development team will be on the PlayStation Network tonight, taking on all comers.
Fighter Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is an interesting tie-in. On one hand, you’ve got MK and on the other DC Comics. Interesting! But MK creator Ed Boon has even bigger dreams.
Some of our more jaded readers may poo-poo Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe‘s softer, more broad reaching one-on-one violence, but there’s one organisation who has no qualms with the T-rated brawler. That would be the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry which has reviewed the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game, finding that it “will likely facilitate an adult joining a teenager in video game play.” Not a sexy box quote by any means, but maybe better than we were expecting.
They said it couldn’t be done. Actually what they really said was it shouldn’t be done, followed by several what the hell were they thinkings, but Midway went and did it anyway. Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe is a concept that frightened and confused quite a few people in the gaming community, but as new footage and details trickled out the concept slowly began to grow on us. Soon we found ourselves looking forward to beating up Sonya Blade with Wonder Woman, or Batman with Scorpion. It might not be so bad, right?
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is a massive change in direction for the fifteen year old series. It’s been a rough transition at times, from arcades to consoles, from generation to generation, with the latest (and eighth!) iteration pulling half of its roster from the DC Comics mythos, dropping gameplay mechanics established in previous games and plugging in new ones. As odd as it may seem on paper, seeing Batman battle Sub-Zero in the streets of Metropolis doesn’t look that unusual on-screen.
Chicago-based developer Midway announced its third quarter earnings today, pulling in $US51.4 million in revenue. That’s better than the $US36.7 million it did the year prior and thankfully in line with expectations. The bad news — oh, there’s bad news, naturally — is that Midway took a loss of $US75.9 million, with losses planned to continue for the year. That’s worse than the quarter before and the year prior, for those who like to keep track of such things.
