PS3 owners have Kratos. Xbox 360 owners still have a question mark. With less than a month to go before Mortal Kombat launches, NetherRealm Studios boss Ed Boon is once again declining to rule out something special for the Microsoft version, and in a new interview with Giant Bomb he made it sound like the reveals are far from finished.
Boon Says Major News Is Still To Come
Boon told the site that not every character in the roster has been announced yet and that the game is packed with hidden content. He went further, saying he could not remember the last time the team was this far along in a game and still had major news left to share. When the conversation turned to the two console versions, he insisted that “we love our 360 players and we love our PS3 players,” while adding that there was nothing ready to announce. He also said he expects everybody to get something they will be happy with, as Attack of the Fanboy noted in its writeup of the interview.
That is about as close to a wink as Boon has offered, and fans are reading plenty into it. Ever since God of War’s Kratos was confirmed late last year as a playable guest fighter exclusive to the PS3 version, Xbox 360 players have been asking for a counterpart of their own. Boon has been tight lipped from the start, answering speculation about a 360 exclusive fighter in January with a no comment tweet that only added fuel to the fire.
No Microsoft Fighter Has Been Confirmed
The names that come up most often in fan discussions are Master Chief from Halo and Marcus Fenix from Gears of War, but there is nothing official behind either guess. Any character from a Microsoft franchise would need Microsoft’s blessing, and neither NetherRealm nor Warner Bros. has confirmed that talks of that kind exist. For now, Boon’s comments confirm only that there is more to announce, not what it is or which platform it is for.
Whatever happens, Mortal Kombat is shaping up as one of the bigger fighting game releases of the year. The reboot takes the series back to a two dimensional fighting plane with modern 3D visuals, and its story mode retells the events of the first three games. It also adds tag team battles for up to four players, a Challenge Tower full of offbeat missions, and the return of the series’ trademark Fatalities. Preorder bonuses have also been split between retailers, with GameStop, Best Buy and Amazon each offering a different classic character skin along with that fighter’s original Fatality.
Mortal Kombat is due on PS3 and Xbox 360 on April 19 in North America. If Boon is to be believed, there are still some surprises to come before then, and 360 owners will be watching closely to see whether one of them is aimed at them.