How many people play Mortal Kombat? — 2023 statistics

The Mortal Kombat series has sold over 73 million copies.

(Sources: VG Sales, VG Chartz, VideoGamer, IGN)

• Mortal Kombat 11 sold 12 million copies.
• Mortal Kombat X sold 11 million copies.
• Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance sold 3.5 million copies.
• Mortal Kombat sold 3 million copies.
• Mortal Kombat (2011) sold 3 million copies.
• Mortal Kombat Mobile has over 138 million downloads.

This s perhaps the most important statistic as it gives us a clear perspective on the performance of the Mortal Kombat series as a whole and through these numbers, we can see that this is the best-selling fighting game franchise of all time. You can rarely see complete sales statistics for all of the games in a franchise, so we can’t find all of the numbers, but from what we could find, we can see that Mortal Kombat 11 is the most successful game in the series, having sold 12 million copies.

The Mortal Kombat series has grossed over $7 billion in revenue.

(Sources: VG Sales, GameFAQs)

• Mortal Kombat X raked in more than $130 million in its first week.
• The rights for Mortal Kombat were purchased by Warner Bros. from Midway for $33 million.
• Mortal Kombat is the best-selling fighting game of all time.

Just like the total number of sales, companies do not tend to share their total profits, so we just have speculation and data estimates to look at, but from what we can see, even the approximate earnings of $7 billion are great, although the real earnings of the series might actually be quite higher. The popularity of some of the later games in the series can also be gauged through the sales of Mortal Kombat X which accumulated excellent profits in its first week.

Mortal Kombat 2 suffered a major source code link.

(Source: CBR)

• The leak included canned assets, unused content, new fatalities, and much more.
• There was so much content that a three-hour stream couldn’t cover half of it.
• It also included an unused fatality for Shao Khan.
• Games like Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher, and more had source code leaks in the past.

Source codes are the backbones of games and contain all of the information a game has to function properly. Unfortunately, source codes tend to get leaked to the public so anyone can gain access to it and essentially see what the game is made of. When it comes to an old game like Mortal Kombat 2, it’s hard to get an idea of how significant this is, but it is unfortunate nonetheless.

The 2021 Mortal Kombat movie was miles better than the 1995 version.

(Source: ScreenRant)

• Mortal Kombat: Annihilation doesn’t even come into the discussion on account of how bad the movie is.
• Mortal Kombat (2021) has a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s not the shining star of the Mortal Kombat film franchise, but it stands better than other titles.
• The 2021 film included the fatalities and gore/violence that the 1995 film lacked.
• It also included a better roster of characters compared to the 1995 film.
• Moving forward, it’s going to be much easier to build more films off of Mortal Kombat (2021) because it is done much better.

Video game adaptations are notorious for being horrendously bad, meaning that the movie/show that is based on the game is going to be as far from the source material as you can imagine it to be. While the Mortal Kombat movies are not exactly “the best”, they are still relatively decent and can be watched. Except for Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Don’t watch that movie.

Players have fought 15.5 billion battles in Mortal Kombat Mobile in 5 years.

(Source: Twitter)

• 5.9 billion faction war battles were fought.
• 2.9 billion quest missions were completed.
• 147 characters were released.
• MKII Scorpion, Klassic Reptile, and Konquerer Shao Khan were the three most-used diamond characters.
• There were too many uppercuts to count.

The next two lines of stats are going to show you some community performance statistics to see how the community plays the game and how much time it puts into the game on a yearly, and even weekly basis. For Mortal Kombat Mobile, the free-to-play mobile game, we can see that the community completed 15.5 billion battles, which is massive for a mobile game, so we are free to assume that this game is performing quite well and is going to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

Mortal Kombat X players performed 130 million fatalities in a week.

(Source: Pinterest)

• The top three picked characters were Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Raiden.
• 338 million battles were fought.
• More flawless victories were achieved than the number of cars made in the United States in a year.
• Players spent 6,000 years playing the game.
• Shinnok had the highest win rate.
• The White Lotus was the most successful faction.

Just like the previous line of stats, this is meant to show the performance of the game in question, and in the case of Mortal Kombat X, we can see that the community is immensely productive, having accumulated over 338 million battles in one random week of the game’s life. Other than that, these stats are exactly like what you would expect for a very popular franchise.

Mortal Kombat 11 played a large role in pushing digital game sales to $8.8 billion.

(Source: VentureBeat)

• Aside from Mortal Kombat, Fortnite also helped reach this number in digital sales.
• The digital sales in April 2019 were increased by 7% compared to the period of God of War (2018)’s launch.
• In 2019, Warner Bros. Interactive revealed that Mortal Kombat 11 had the best launch in the history of the series.

Digital game sales are constantly on the rise because of the convenience of acquiring games through digital means, and the profit that comes from allowing players to purchase games digitally is massive for the gaming industry. We can see that the excellent success of Mortal Kombat 11 and Fortnite pushed the digital sales of the video game industry to over $8.8 billion, which is a huge step in the right direction.

Ed Boon has considered remaking some of the older Mortal Kombat games.

(Source: The Gamer)

• Ed Boon has been known for being active on Twitter and interacting with fans.
• He would sometimes tease upcoming additions to the newest games and give information regarding new releases of games in general.
• When presented with the idea of a remake of Mortal Kombat 4, he enthusiastically replied that he had considered that before.
• The idea for a remake of a classic Mortal Kombat game likely came because of the Dead Space remake which was massively successful.

Ed Boon has become something of a meme over the years for how much he tweets and how much he interacts with the Mortal Kombat community. He has frequently teased new releases and new content for the series through “coded” tweets and ambiguous responses that make the community excited for the future of the series.

The Mortal Kombat 11 esports scene has awarded $576,390.

(Source: Esports Earnings)

• The total earnings were distributed through 60 tournaments.
• The most money was awarded at Final Kombat 2020 with $100,000.
• The rest of the tournaments had prize pools ranging from $60,000 to $53.
• The most successful Mortal Kombat player is Dominique “SonicFox” Mclean.
• He has won $708,185 across all of the tournaments he has played in.
• He is ranked #233 in the world and #38 in the United States.

Since Mortal Kombat is a fundamentally very competitive series, it makes perfect sense that there has been a lot of activity in the esports industry. However, compared to other games that have a much larger esports presence, Mortal Kombat 11 doesn’t have that many achievements, but it has still awarded a lot of money to its players.

To sum up

FINISH IT! That’s all we have to say about the Mortal Kombat series and everything it has accomplished over its 30-year existence in the gaming industry. We’ve said this before, but this series is a cornerstone of the fighting genre and has established itself as a go-to choice for anyone looking to enjoy a good fighting game. There is a lot more in store for the Mortal Kombat series moving forward, and we can’t wait to report back here whenever something new comes out! We sincerely hope that you have enjoyed what we had to say here and that you have learned something new about this brutal franchise.