Mort-ACK! Kombussy 0 has finally announced something new after like a year of being an unfinished bland corposlop utterly lagging behind Tekken 8, Street Figher 6 and Guilty Gear, new characters include Ghostface, Noob Saibot, Sektor, Cyraxx, Conan the Barbarian, and Robert Patrick's T-1000 Cop Terminator that looks more like Tobey Maguire.... oh and Sektor and Cyrax have been buck broken and are now sassy lesbian black women because Warner Bros.

good ol times before @CamNewton ruined every tournoument

Mortal Kombat hasn't really been respected since UMK3, like 25 years ago. Back then, it was viewed as a comparable western franchise to Japanese fighters.

They pulled a lot of really dumb moves attempting to reinvent the wheel that were absolutely terrible, and then they settled on a new format in 2011 which was less butt than the stuff in the middle, and have used that since (MK, MK X, MK 11, Injustice, now this).

MK games typically play completely differently from jap games, which dominate the competetivs market (mk typically sells very well to casuals), and have what is considered to be a whiny noob fanbase, and nrs typically does a shit job of balancing them, so typically the nrs cycle happens

Game announced > hype > launches poorly > broken balance causes rage > patch breaks balance but different this time > noobs stop caring > dlc characters released, op > sweats get annoyed and stop playing > nrs props up tournaments > nrs announces new game >cycle repeats

Pretty much only people who love mk or are nostalgic for it end up playing them

It is not a terrible game, just a massive downgrade over MK11 in every single way.

MK was originally designed by just doing the opposite of Street Fighter (Lines instead of part circles, button block instead of holding back, up and down instead of punches and kicks). This makes it feel very odd compared to every single other fighting game (even other NRS games lol), both western and Eastern, and paired with shitty balancing it was always a mess.

MK ended up getting a bad rep with fighting game players post UMK3 but still had brand recognition which has led to them having a completely separated, very casual audience.

Western devs still cook though, big ones that are exclusively western of the top of my head, Killer Instinct, Injustice and Skullgirls