Last week, publisher Warner Bros. quietly delayed the last-gen port of Mortal Kombat X, according to several GameStop employees, who tell Kotaku they informed customers on Friday that PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the new fighting game had been delayed from mid 2015 to late 2015.
The mega-retailer changed the listing on their website, too, quietly tweaking the release date from June 2…
…to December 31:
This marks the second delay for the last-gen versions of Mortal Kombat X, which came out for PS4, Xbox One, and PC last month. Warner Bros. originally announced that the Xbox 360 and PS3 ports would be out alongside the others in April, but earlier this year the publisher said they were delaying the last-gen versions to “summer.” Now, the status of these ports is murky, and it’s even more unclear when they will be released. (Yet another reason not to pre-order games.)
This all raises some interesting questions, as we enter a strange stasis period where many publishers and developers would like to release games for the more powerful platforms without feeling saddled by the restrictions of old hardware, but also feel like they need to sell last-gen ports in order to maximise sales. How much longer will publishers do this? Will any of those ports be worth the resources? How much will inferior versions of a game ultimately hurt its resonance with fans?
With last fall’s Shadow of Mordor, for example — also published by Warner Bros. — the delayed last-gen versions turned out to be inferior ports that stripped away much of what made the game great. Some other big 2015 games — The Witcher 3, Mad Max, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate — are sticking to PS4 and Xbox One, while others, like Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Madden 16, won’t ditch the last generation of consoles yet.
Warner may have decided that Mortal Kombat X is doing just fine without those old platforms: it was the #1 seller of April, according to NPD sales data. Maybe they don’t want to risk cannibalising sales — or hurting their Metacritic score — with an inferior port.
Representatives for Warner Bros. did not respond to requests for comment.
Comments
11 responses to “What’s Up With Mortal Kombat X On PS3 And 360?”
Just recently NIS also announced it would focus solely on Vita and PS4 games, dropping the last gen. This may explain why they suddenly announced Witch and the Hundred Knight on PS4 along with a sequel.
How about slightly mad studios dropping support for their leading console platform after using it to secure funding?
To be fair, the Xbox 360 is almost a decade old, it’s probably okay to just let it go at this point. 😛
Was gonna basically say the same thing.
Would anyone really care if the game was just canned for last gen consoles completely? I’m honestly surprised NRS are bothering with it.
I think it’s just that the publishers see the 100M+ install bases on PS3 and 360 and see dollar signs, but it really is time to start driving the new consoles across the board, not that the PS4 needs that anyway.
Except it’s not 100M+ install bases anymore, as many owners of PS3’s and and 360’s would have upgraded by now.
While you are right. The numbers don’t lie especially on sites like Truachievements where it tracks how many people (who are registered) play each game the new gen versions always outsell the old last gen versions by quite a large amount 10/1 in some cases.
Dear 360 and ps3 owners, you should know better than to own a console that ages.
Last gen is so…… last gen?
Those two antiques should’ve been left behind years ago. Time to upgrade and move on!
At least Shadow of Mordor did something new – something which turned out to be unscaleable.
I don’t see what’s so difficult about butchering the graphics to make a fighter work across different console generations. It’s not as if does anything particularly innovative.