Mortal Kombat X (lost builds of cancelled Xbox 360/Playstation 3 ports of fighting game sequel; 2015)

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Mkxbox.jpg

Official box art of the Xbox 360 version of the game.

Status: Completely Lost


Mortal Kombat X is a fighting video game made by Neatherrealm Studios and published by WarnerBros Interactive. It was released on the 7th of April on the Playstation 4, Xbox One and Steam. However, originally it was revealed early on to have ports to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, the 'last generation' of consoles at that time[1], these ports, however, never materialised and no verifiable screenshots or gameplay have ever been seen.

Background

At the time, the Playstation 4 and Xbox One were new consoles and older consoles such as the PS3 and Xbox 360 still had a large user base. Due to this and despite the notable power disparity between the two, games were commonly ported between both systems, with the 'last gen' versions of games usually being of a far lower quality than their (at that time) current generation counterparts. The game was being ported by High Voltage Software who ported the PC version.

Content

Little is known about the last gen ports of Mortal Kombat X, however, from online listings, it seems to have had similar features to the PS4 and Xbox One counterparts[2]. The port would have likely have had much worse graphics than its counterparts. In August 2015, leaked footage surfaced of the cancelled port, this footage was considered fake and was later deleted from the internet[3]. The port may have been fairly far along in development when it was cancelled, as listings for DLC codes for the Xbox 360 version can be found online[4].

Development History

Initially announced when WarnerBros Interactive confirmed the platforms for the game, the game was delayed twice. The first delay was before the release of other versions of the game with a vague release date of "Summer 2015", later confirmed to be June 2nd[5]. The second delay occurred in May, although was never officially confirmed and had the game scheduled for an autumn 2015 release date[6]. It was officially cancelled in August 2015 with the official statement being: "After months of development, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has come to the regrettable conclusion that we cannot release Mortal Kombat X for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Please know our teams worked diligently to meet the quality standards set by the current-gen versions of the game. We were not able to get the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions to the quality expected of a Mortal Kombat game and are very sorry for not being able to deliver the products as originally planned."[7]

Reason for Cancellation

The reasoning given for the cancellation of the game is somewhat vague. This has lead to speculation as to why the game was cancelled. Failure of another last gen port, the port of Shadow of Mordor, a Lord of the Rings game which received large amounts of criticism[8], may be the reason for this as WarnerBros felt that shying away from the last generation systems would have been better (other planned last gen ports such as Mad Max were cancelled as well[9], lending more possibility to this idea). It should be noted also that Heavy Voltage Digital came under intense scrutiny of the handling on the PC port of the game and eventually abandoned the project, removing all references to it from their websites and social media. The company was understaffed and ill-equipped for porting the game which may have contributed to the cancellation[10]. This happened in August 2015, which lines up with the date of cancellation.

References

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