*Mortal Kombat 1* Has Sold 8 Million! Why Is It Still Growing After Support Ended?

For JRPG players who consider 80 hours just the starting line, what they often look at in a fighting game isn’t how stylish a combo can be, but how long its lifeline can stretch after a title stops receiving updates. This time, Mortal Kombat 1 has given a very straightforward answer: NetherRealm Studios confirmed this week that since its launch in September 2023, the game has now surpassed 8 million copies sold worldwide. More importantly, it didn’t get there through a single explosive launch window, but kept climbing even nearly a year after the announcement that major content updates had ended. That kind of staying power feels a bit like a hidden dungeon that only gradually opens up after you’ve beaten the game.

From the data, this 8 million figure covers all platforms the game has launched on and also includes the complete edition released last May. According to EventHubs’ method of calculation, in less than 8 months since the last public update, Mortal Kombat 1 has sold roughly another 1.8 million copies. For a game that has already made it clear it will no longer receive new DLC characters or story content, that pace really says a lot about its market resilience. The official statement also explicitly thanked the player community and said sales are still continuing to rise, which means its commercial lifecycle has not truly reached the end yet.

And when you place it alongside comparable titles, the result becomes even more interesting. Mortal Kombat 1 has already surpassed Street Fighter 6, which has sold around 6 million copies, showing that its reach in the mass market remains very strong. Its brand pull, content recognizability, and ability to generate discussion are all still there. That said, if we’re talking about the series’ internal ceiling, it still has a considerable gap to close with Mortal Kombat 11, which had already reached 15 million copies sold by 2022. In other words, Mortal Kombat 1 is stable right now, but not yet legendary—like a New Game+ JRPG party with great stats that’s still missing the last few god-tier pieces of gear before becoming truly maxed out.

Still, the room for future growth is clearly limited. NetherRealm already mentioned last May that the team’s focus had shifted to “the next project,” and later confirmed that Mortal Kombat 1 would not be getting any more DLC characters or story content. Unfortunately, that’s basically where the momentum of its long-term live support ends. Trying to push sales up by another major step through continued updates is now obviously much harder than it was earlier on. It’s also worth noting that the game still does not have a native version for Switch 2, meaning it has missed one opportunity to repackage itself and bring in a fresh wave of users.

From a buying-advice perspective, my judgment is simple: for players who want to pick up the complete package in one go and aren’t obsessed with keeping up with the latest seasonal cycle, this is actually a fairly low-stress entry point. The complete edition has already been available since last May, and there won’t be any more new characters or story expansions to keep dragging out the checklist. That kind of “the collection scope is now sealed” state is actually quite friendly for players who like to jump in later and catch up. For the industry, Mortal Kombat 1 breaking 8 million once again shows that even after major updates stop, a fighting game with a strong IP can still keep selling—so long as the foundation is solid enough and the community buzz hasn’t faded—gradually shining through word of mouth and long-tail sales, much like a classic old-school Japanese masterpiece.