Warner Bros. Was Worried Mortal Kombat 11 Wouldn't Be "Nintendo-Friendly"

Mortal kombat Puzzle COMFIRMED!!!!!!! 🙃

I have it and love it

Don't blame them for thinking that

Are we in the days on the SNES! 🤷🏾‍♂️

1993 was a long long time ago
Nintendo allowed blood in MK2.

it's time to move on from this stereotype

@outsider83 @Slowdive
Was going to post basically the same thing. I thought Nintendo had long since shown it's not as restrictive as it once was. Hell even in the later SNES days it was starting to loosen the reigns a bit.

Fans may think hardware specs is the reason why Switch doesn't recieve as much 3rd party support as PlayStation or Xbox, but in reality, it's looks to be the "nIntENdo iS fOr liTtlE kIddieS" sentiment.

They should be more worried about releasing it on a Sony console. Sony is the ones thinking hard of kids, and already censored and banned many games since PS1 launched.

Even Bombing ***** on Wii U had to be renamed to a family friendly name on PS4. Again. Worry about Sony, not Nintendo.

Nintendo said many years ago that they had no problem with violence on a Nintendo console, but they wouldn't make these kind of games themselves. They were fine as long as a third party did it.

Still waiting for Injustice 2 just for the TMNT and Hellboy.

Also, it would have been hilarious if they stretched out the Mileena joke of her never coming in to the game.

Well they have DOOM and Wolfenstein which I’d say are more graphically violent due to the first person camera. It’s true that the Nintendo audience isn’t traditionally looking for that experience compared to other platforms though, which is a shame as Madworld and House of the Dead Overkill were pretty great despite the sales not being brilliant.

Lost interest in the franchise after Deception.
Don’t like the stupid X-ray moves because, and hear me out, it’s just too ridiculous! How the hell do theybsustain that type of damage and then just keep fighting?! They essentially do fatality level moves in the middle of the fight... it’s just for gore sake and I just don’t like it.
I know I’m ridiculous. But anyways, been a long time since I was interested in a MK title.

Lol 2020.. even 8yo are playing mortal kombat and laugh when doing fatalitys 🤔 what happend lol.

@TimboSlice
Yeah i feel you, same here.

Now just give us the original Arcade Trilogy

They didn't know Nintendo help third party put Mature rated games on the Switch also. Why esle would games like Doom, Bayonetta 1 & 2, Wolfenstein, Witcher III, and LA Noire be doing on Switch if not for Nintendo allowing them to be there.

Hard to pass up the sale. $25, I think?

Thought that was quite funny and understandable tbf

Great game. Tough, but great.

Bring us Injustice 2 please

Also bring injustice to the nintendo switch! Love that game, i would double dip.

I bought it second hand. Does that count?

This shows that there are many higher ups at these publishers that know muck all about the actual gaming landscape (outside of what appears in national media).

Loved the original 1-3

Mortal Kombat has been on the Wii.

Anyhow, let's hope we get more support from NRS in the future.

@MysteryCupofJoe Among other things why i bought Ultimate Edition for Xbox.

This concern was stupid because pretty much every Mortal Kombat game was released on Nintendo platforms except like 3 of them(Shaolin Monks, 9 and X).

It's really bothersome that in 2020 publishers have this idiotic mentality.

From personal experience most people that own a Switch, ESPECIALLY playing games like Mario are the 'mature' audience. Playing Mario in public just shows that you're not an insecure child and are confident not to be judged by what you play on a damn gaming console.

The whole "mature games for mature gamers" is honestly a fad that has survived for way too long. Looking at statistics, the Call of Duty fanbase consists of mostly kids.

Gaming is a medium for people, each with their own preferences. Just like there are adults going to see children's superhero movies and Pixar films, there are people who buy and play Mario. It doesn't mean that the audience is limited to those types of games.

Just because I like to throw Pikmin at apples doesn't mean I don't like to boot up a horror game every now and then.

Ugh. Just a frustrating mentality, honestly.

@Ventilator

Even Nintendo isn’t opposed publishing ultra violent or adult content made by 2nd party studios or 3rd party developers.

Nintendo published Perfect Dark, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Eternal Darkness, and Bayonetta 2.

Nintendo’s internal studios didn’t develop them but they published them and handled all the marketing, proudly showing their logo during advertisements.

They also assisted development on the Twin Snakes for GameCube and heavily promoted the game, assisting Konami with those duties.

I don’t think Nintendo will ever internally develop an M rated title, though. It’s not their thing.

With their own franchises I think the closest we will ever get to a truly “adult” (I hate that term since I’m 31 and love Nintendo games) Nintendo franchise is Metroid. Metroid’s atmosphere and characterization of its conflicts have always leaned more towards teens and young adults more so than children.

I love and will always love the MK franchise. First time I ever played MK was in the Arcade. Man, I loved it. It was brutal and it looked so real.

Then I had a Gameboy and I could play Mortal Kombat at home. I think it was my most played Gameboy game. Great game.

I bought the Switch version and I love it.

I’m really hoping that Nintendo will eventually revive Eternal Darkness. They own the rights to it. They could start by just remastering it and releasing it on Switch.

Frankly, I don’t understand why Nintendo doesn’t open up some more dedicated American and European studios. An American studio with some old members of Silicon Knights could be tasked with a new Eternal Darkness game or even a remaster/remake of the original.

Nevermind it being not Nintendo friendly. It's not switch friendly! The game barely runs on the thing as is and the krypt looks atrocious! Oh and this whole thing about Nintendo being too kiddy for blood and gore is so 1992. They have since had many many blood filled games for mature gamers. You just have to look a little harder but they're there.

I've got it and, after many years, away from the series I must say that MK 11 is an excellent game.
It runs nicely on the Switch and to play it on the go is amazing.

@TheRedComet I think Nintendo only trusts dedicated, hard working, and professionally mature devs. Nintendo is a Japanese company, and like all Japanese companies, work with dedication and professionalism. Take Mario+Rabbids for example. The Ubisoft devs showed their love and dedication to Nintendo (plus showed professionalism on the level of a high paying job interview) and Nintendo decided to take a chance and trust Ubisoft. At first their trust has paid off and Mario+Rabbids was a success, because it shows quality.

However, I'm pretty sure Nintendo quietly disassociated themselves with Ubisoft after Starlink's complete failure, the controversies, subpar/bad quality games, and Ubisoft devs poorly tackling social problems with the unsubtle maturity of a teenager. This is why there is no Nintendo of America dev team or a Nintendo of Europe dev team. There are too many immature English speaking devs who tend to misbehave, get lazy, develop superiority complexes, act rudely to customers, act stupid, and get upset too easily.

@MysteryCupofJoe I would be great, nintendo make it happen!

Whaddya know, Switch version of MK11 launched alongside the other versions, wasn't broken, got all the dlc, etc. and sold well.

I think there are people who own a Switch because they've Nintendo fans, and there are people who own a Switch because they want a handheld.

I come from the future, year 2180 to be precise, and we still have articles about Mortal Kombat and whether it should be on a Nintendo platform.

The “Nintendo friendly” game thing is the biggest myth in gaming.... all gamers of all shapes and sizes own the switch and did the wii and gamecube etc.... people that actually know about gaming know that some of the most successful titles on the Nintendo family haven’t fallen into a “Nintendo friendly” grouping.... soon 3rd parties realise the switch is a massive hungry market the better. Good games will sell as well on the switch than other formats... bad games won’t.... that’s the difference

I could of told them it would do well. So many adults play Switch and video games in current times. The whole label of "nerds" and "dorks" are the only adults that play video games has long died out. Any adult walking around holding onto the thought that only "nerds/dorks" play games I find that adult has a hobby of one of three things: sitting and getting drunk all evening, driving around to see when they are going to get with others to do #1, or a combo of #1 and #2.

I would have bought a censored version. Lol... where’s the sweat?!

It's not the super NES era anymore. When I was a teen back then (yup, old), that is what killed the super NES among school kids...the lack of mature games. Sorry to say, that I was a Gamecube fan, and they had a pretty good amount of mature games...not as much as the others, but it showed that they were trying. I think that everyone kept on thinking that nintendo was just Mario, and everything was a kiddie game. Yeah, almost all of nintendo's IP's are E-rated kids games, but there are others, and the Switch doesn't have a ton of Mature games, but it has quite a few, and who knows what else will come. I'm still surprised that the Witcher 3 is coming, especially with all the nudity, but let's remember one thing...the game BMX XXX. Sony was the only one back then that censored it a little...Nintendo and Microsoft kept everything in it.

Wow. Has Warner Bros. even seen Doom on the Switch?

Nintendo friendly is the wrong mentality

It's 2020. We have had MK2 and 3 on SNES with blood, KI with blood and finishers of its own, RE4 on Gamecube, several Suda51 games, and a bunch of other mature titles I'm sure I'm leaving out. I refuse to believe these devs are STILL stuck in 1990 a whole 30 years later.

Probably done ok because it’s so blurry you cannot see the gore

Awaiting the ultimate release next month.

Games like Mortal Kombat have no appeal to me, but I’m glad to see the Switch get a far larger quantity and variety of games than Nintendo consoles typically receive.

@nessisonett Dunno about that chief. The reason the switch is doing so well right now is because the same people buying it also have xboxes and ps3s 4s etc. If the traditional Nintendo audience didn't really go for that experience compared to other consoles they wouldn't own the other consoles! Lol what's really going on is Sony knows it's only edge against Nintendo is to draw in the older gen that started with Nintendo in the 80s/90s so needs to staunchly reposition itself as the brand for that audience. Without them, they have no real audience. So the campaigning since 1995 was aimed at vehemently reiterating Nintendo's family friendly image as Nintendo itself had to reiterate it several times (keep in mind this only applies to westerners) forcing Nintendo into a bad position. So when the PS1 dropped and Nintendo already had several things working against them all Sony had to do was provide an out for the devs on the development side and consumers on the content side. Because devs flocked more to Sony on the development side Nintendo was left with whatever they could get from N64 - Wii and since they couldn't get any of the heavy hitting games their former audience was buying it also reinforced the idea that their audience wasn't into those games. Ironically it's EXACTLY them that was buying these games but they had to go to Sony to get them! Lol now that Sony is realizing ITSELF is now in hot water because the "Nintendo for kids" strategy isn't working anymore, Sony is trying to reconstruct some things by taking a few pages from the Nintendo playbook, trying to appeal to younger audiences

I think it's fair for some publishers to be apprehensive because there's a long history of third-party games, especially M-rated ones, underperforming on Nintendo systems. Regardless of why this happened, it still happened. It was an issue with the Gamecube, the Wii, (to a lesser extent) the DS, and the 3DS. I think lightning has finally struck for Nintendo with the Switch, and they've shown they have the platform and the numbers to make the investment from third parties worthwhile. And we've seen that with ports of new games like Doom and MK11, as well as evergreens like Saints Row 3.

Honestly, it's a refreshing change.

Why is this myth constantly perpetuated and repeated ad nauseam? Violent and more adult games have been on Nintendo platforms for a long time. Why wouldn't Nintendo want a new Mortal Kombat on their hardware and why wouldn't it sell? Do people not remember the Resident Evil series was once exclusive to the Gamecube? Or that that games like Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day did really well on the N64?

I'm sure it's been said before and probably in this comment section. But I don't think it's ever been a matter of their not being an audience on a Nintendo platform for mature games. It's really just been a combination of a ton of things other than the audience being there. Though that certainly plays a part in the sense that maybe the audience avoids specific Nintendo consoles when the the third party support is lacking. Of course, alot of that has to do with the consoles having been underpowered than their contemporaries. But inherently, I don't think a specific audience is absent from Nintendo

@Jojarett87 I mean... not really. Sony’s only real new IP AAA games below a 12 this gen are Knack, Concrete Genie and Dreams. I used the word traditionally because if you look at games on the Cube and Wii that were aimed at adult audiences, they just didn’t sell as well. Eternal Darkness is another example alongside MadWorld, a game with great promise that really is brilliant but didn’t do the sales. I can guarantee they would have done the sales if they were on PS, maybe not Xbox due to what the audiences usually go for.

@Cosats
Did Metroid Prime 4 come out yet?

Why did they have concerns after games like Doom, Wolfenstein 2 and Skyrim released on Switch. The Bayonetta games even are mature rated.

I have It since day one, and I love It! That thought of "Nintendo Is only for kids" was already obsolete when MK II was released on the Super NES.

@TheRedComet Yeah. Consoles needs games for everyone including violent games. A console is a hard sell if there is no games like this. Metroid Prime is about the limit from Nintendo themselves.
Conker were actually published by THQ in Europe.

Nintendo themselves published the bloody Devil's Third on Wii U... Time changes.
Wii U also got a new more gorier Ninja Gaiden 3 at launch which later got ported to 360 and PS3.

Either way, it's nice that games like Doom, Mortal Kombat 11 etc. sold good on Switch.

@Varkster I couldn't have summed it up better 👏🏻

@nessisonett you're not at all wrong here, just you're right for the wrong reasons! Lol true those types of games would have sold much better on the rival consoles but not because our interest wasnt there, rather because we already had those other systems and had games that were just as good or better, and more specifically because those systems outsold the gamecube in the US (Gamecube outsold XB in Japan naturally lol) in the case of the Wii it did have the sales numbers but there were two problems. The biggest is the Wii's specific install base. It wasn't marketed nearly as a traditional Nintendo. The total opposite actually. It was marketed towards people who don't regularly play games which is why the casual gaming market as we know exploded in the first place. Games like Madworld weren't going to sell to millions of grandpas looking to play golf games and Mario party with their grandkids! Lol but the other half of gamers that would play games like Madworld had already moved on. It was a case of too little too late. Red Steel was in the same batch if I'm not mistaken BUT No More Heroes, Eternal Darkness and RE4 on the other hand came at just the right time when Nintendo once again proved they are still relevant and started roping back in some of the fans it seemingly lost. but yeah it for sure wasn't because we weren't there. We had just already committed to the other systems because that's were all the games kept ending up in the past

I primarily buy Nintendo systems because I want to be able to play their first party exclusives but I also like to play third party titles too without having to buy another console.

I'm pleased MK11 did well, I bought it a few months ago and I think it's decent. Given the install base of the Switch I think people will definitely be prepared to buy a reasonable port on Switch, even if it's just for the portability. Perhaps EA could learn a lesson on this point.

People really need to let go of the whole belief that Nintendo is only for kiddie games. I would think that was dispelled ages ago.

@TheRedComet Nintendo did make a few M rated games. I believe Eternal Darkness was their first and Geist was their second.

@Ventilator Ninja Gaiden 3 was already on PS360, and Razors Edge was the Wii U edition which was a better version but came later.

@Varkster the real truth is that devs know better. But making up that excuse makes it easier on them and less costly. Takes a lot of effort to make a game especially when you aren't 100% sure about it and Nintendo systems almost force devs to put their best feet forward. Hence why they outsourced MK11 to another studio to work on. Laziness is the issue and they know they can guarantee big money off the other platforms with less effor

To everyone mentioning other games with violence as an example of how Nintendo does not prevent this sort of content any more, the type of violence in MK11 is still far worse than most every other game. Specially when you consider the family ties in the game, like Johnny Cage beheading his own daughter and then making fun of it, or Kotal Kahn's doing the same but in an even more gruesome manner to his lover, all in an incredibly realistic and mostly anatomically correct depiction. That to me is way worse than almost anything I saw in Doom or Wolfenstein (the latter has some close ones though).

I love the series, I've played every entry in it since it started and I still play MK11, but the last 3 games can still be so gruesome and detailed I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo in some way discouraged it. So it is surprising that it's on Switch at all, and that Nintendo itself even has the trailers in their Youtube channel.

@Sanangelo89 The original NG 3, but the upgraded were on Wii U first.

From Kiwi:

Wii U:

NA: November 18, 2012
JP: December 8, 2012
EU: January 11, 2013
AU: May 11, 2013

PlayStation 3 & Xbox 360

NA: April 2, 2013
JP: April 4, 2013
EU: April 5, 2013
AU: April 11, 2013

I still have my Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 cartridges for SNES. The first one being mostly a curiousity

I think it's fine. Nintendo Switch already has dark games on the eshop that has gore in it. So this is a fine game.

Do people think kids games won’t be xbox or PlayStation friendly before release? Nope they just release them and hope the audience that cares will buy them. I don’t know why Nintendo needs special consideration. Release your games and optimize them well. Those that care about them will buy them.

Disappointing that you have to be connected to the internet to start the game (this frustrated me on the subway pre-covid lol). Besides that they did an awesome job bringing it to the Switch with 60fps 😁