Mortal Kombat 12 had an unceremonious announcement during a recent earnings call.

It’s a big year for fighting games with brand-new releases coming all over the schedule. Seems, we’re not done though. We’ve just gotten our first peek at yet more games joining the roster. Another of the biggest fighting game franchises has announced a sequel this month.

Mortal Kombat 12 announced during earnings call

Mortal Kombat 12 has been announced during a Warner Bros earnings call. Midway through the call, those hosting it began to discuss video games. They talked about numerous upcoming games including Suicide Squad, but also snuck in a little bit of Mortal Kombat 12.

This has been a pretty unexpected announcement. Warner Brothers Discovery held its Q4 earnings call recently and detailed some of its plans for the future of the company, including games. This led to confirmation of Mortal Kombat 12, but also the release date. The new title was said to be in the works to release this year. It’s potentially arriving in the next two quarters according to their initial plans.

Coming this year would be a pretty fast turnaround. Clearly, they’ve been working on the next installment for Mortal Kombat without sharing any early trailers. There’s plenty of competition for new fighters this year, but adding Mortal Kombat into the mix too should keep things interesting.

What Do We Know About Mortal Kombat 12?

This announcement was particularly weird for its complete lack of detail. We got the mention of the game and that it’s planned to launch this year. That was it though!

The announcement for Mortal Kombat 12 was included in the earnings call, but it wasn’t mentioned in any of the supported materials or written versions. This probably means this isn’t quite the full reveal just yet. This was just intended to assure shareholders they were actively working on their IP as it becomes more outdated, not intended to really get fans’ imaginations whirling about what’s coming next. Although now that it’s become such public knowledge, anticipation is definitely going to start building.

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Why Now?

The announcement was kind of missed at first, only to be picked up on through an MK modder who boosted the clip of a live stream to a bigger audience. That it went unnoticed for a few hours is a clear indication of what a surprise this was. It’s not normally the way to unveil such a huge new game, nor did many people really expect it to release this year.

Mortal Kombat 12 joins Street Fighter 6 and Tekken as fighting game franchises with a new instalment in the works or launching soon. This is all going to mean steep competition to capture the attention of players. It’s also going to mean big changes all around to fighting game esports though. We can expect more tournaments to follow EVO and CEO in making the switch to newer games once we get closer to release. 2023 might end up being the final year we see competitive outings for quite a big batch of fighters.