The next generation of fighting games is on its way.Street Fighter 6will arrive in a couple of months, andTekken 8will come sometime later.Mortal Kombat 12is supposedly slated for late 2023, and if so, fans should hear Kombat’s future soon. Even smaller titles likeGranblue Fantasy Versus: RisingandRivals of Aether 2are approaching to challenge the existing slate of fighters. It seems like most corners of the fighting game space are following the genre leaders into a new era, and their communities can’t wait to get their hands on all of these new games.
With that said, it feels like some of those fighting game icons have put in more work than others. Specifically, Capcom and Bandai Namco have done great work advertising their respective franchises.Street Fighter 6andTekken 8both have plenty of footage, even though one is much closer to release than the other. In comparison, NetherRealm Studios’Mortal Kombat 12feels infinitely far awayeven though it could release beforeTekken 8does. It’s easy to dismiss this asMortal Kombat 12simply not having a proper reveal yet, but that exposes how different the marketing strategies are between these genre-defining franchises.
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Mortal Kombat 12 Doesn’t Have A Trailer To Its Name
A lot of this has to do with the time between game announcements and release dates, and what the gaps in between are filled with. Capcom and Bandai Namco have released plenty of trailers for their respective games, and by the time EVO Japan 2023 is finished, bothStreet Fighter 6andTekken 8will have been publicly playable. All of this comes on top of their announcements debuting over a year before their launch windows, with the subsequent marketing filling the air in between.Tekken 8has had so many trailers that it feels just around the corner, even though it’s likely the furthest away.
Mortal Kombat 12, meanwhile, only has an accidental announcement and no marketing. Supposedly, NetherRealm Studios and WB Games Interactive will be repeating theirMK11strategy of revealingMortal Kombat 12at a major media eventwith a substantial trailer, setting a close release date, and then bombarding fans with regular Kombat Kasts covering the roster and mechanics. It should be exciting once it all starts, but by thenStreet Fighter 6may be out andTekken 8will have been playable and releasing trailers for months. Compared to its competitors, there isn’t anything novelMortal Kombat 12can do in its advertising.
Street Fighter and Tekken Never Took Mortal Kombat’s Break
Much of that is just in the realm of typical trailers. Capcom, Bandai Namco, and NetherRealm have all done more to advertise the next installments in their mascot fighting game franchises, though these approaches weren’t taken equally either. Capcom used an entirely new character,Luke, to representStreet Fighter 6inStreet Fighter 5, andTekken 7has been implied to be receiving netcode updates courtesy of theFighting EX Layerdeveloper Arika. In comparison,Mortal Kombat 11did get more story content leading into its next title via the Aftermath expansion, but that was in 2020. Capcom and Bandai Namco have been actively advertising their work as recently as 2023.
Playing off of that, the officialStreet FighterandTekkentournament series have been going strong all throughout that time.Mortal Kombat 11has seen a drastic decrease in tournament player turnouts, and is not currently supporting official majors like its peers. The fact thatsupport ended forMK11in July 2021dealt a severe blow to the game, and neither players nor developers seem interested in rallying around it even asMK12closes in. With the evolutions in visuals and potentially singleplayer content inStreet Fighter 6andTekken 8,Mortal Kombat 12will have a lot to prove when it finally shows its face.
