Mortal Kombat 1, a reboot of the long-running fighting game franchise, is somehow coming to the Nintendo Switch and will also cost $70. That makes it only the second game on the platform to adopt the new price point often reserved for “next-gen” games, and the first made by an outside publisher.
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When NetherRealm Studios finally revealed Mortal Kombat 12 today, which is actually called Mortal Kombat 1, it announced in a press release that the fighting game, unlike Street Fighter 6, won’t be coming to older consoles like the PlayStation 4. But it will be coming to Switch, a slightly less old console that is still much less powerful than Sony and Microsoft’s last-gen hardware. That version will be developed by Shiver Entertainment (which ported Mortal Kombat 11) and Saber Interactive (which ported The Witcher 3).
NetherRealm also announced the Switch port will still be $70 like the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC versions (all of which release on September 19). The first game to break the $60 pricing barrier on the handheld hybrid was Nintendo’s own The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and as the last week has shown, the game is totally worth it and has already become the fastest-selling Zelda ever. Even still, Nintendo said the $70 price won’t be deployed across the board, and Pikmin 4 in July will still be just $60.
Mortal Kombat 1 on Switch might be a tougher sell. The game could run like a heavily optimized dream, or it could, like the last Mortal Kombat on Switch, be chock full of compromises that make it hard to recommend. Mortal Kombat 11 played mostly fine on Nintendo’s platform, but looked super ugly and occasionally ran into issues in online modes given the Switch’s finicky internet connectivity. Hopefully Mortal Kombat 1 fares better.
In the meantime, $70 is steadily replacing the old $60 price tag for new blockbusters. Microsoft released its first $70 game, the vampire shooter Redfall, earlier this month (which, given the game’s many issues, was also a tough sell). More recently, Sega teased that it too is looking at which games in its catalog—potentially the next Sonic or Yakuza—will make the jump.
Correction 5/18/23 10:21 a.m. ET: Street Fighter 6 will come to PS4 but not Xbox One.
