NetherRealm Studios had an Xbox 360-exclusive character planned for Mortal Kombat, but it didn’t make the final cut.
When Kratos was revealed as an exclusive character for the PlayStation 3 version of NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat reboot, Xbox 360 fans may have wondered what exclusive was coming their way. As it turns out, it was nothing. Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon has revealed that NetherRealm also wanted to give Xbox 360 fans something to look forward to, but wasn’t able.
Boon told Eurogamer that the development team definitely wanted an exclusive character for the Xbox 360 version. “Unfortunately, the circumstances didn’t allow us to make a 360-exclusive,” he said. “I’m not allowed to talk too much about it, but I can tell you we certainly wanted to do an exclusive for 360, but that’s all I can say. It was not a decision we made where we said, oh, let’s not do one for the 360.”
Boon mentioned two potential Xbox 360-exclusive characters that would have fit in the Mortal Kombat universe: Marcus Fenix from Gears of War and Master Chief from Halo. “Anybody who’s really knowledgeable about the Xbox video games, the big titles, names like Master Chief from Halo, Marcus Fenix from Gears of War, and any other Xbox-exclusive title, is going to come up in a conversation in talking about it,” he added. “So clearly we’ve discussed it.”
Anyone with both an Xbox 360 and a PlayStation 3 has an incentive to purchase the PS3 version over the 360 version thanks to Kratos, so it seems like it would have been in Microsoft’s best interest to work with NetherRealm to get an exclusive character out there, not that it was definitely an issue with Microsoft. It could have been that Microsoft just didn’t have a character suitable to hand over to NetherRealm that it was wiling to see stabbed, dismembered, dissolved by acid, chopped in half, burnt to a crisp, decapitated, impaled by spikes, or eaten by a dragon.
Source: Eurogamer.
