Mortal Kombat X was released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC last month. Meanwhile, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners are still waiting.
The game was originally slated for simultaneous release across all the platforms mentioned, but the publisher announced earlier this year that the last-gen consoles will be getting their fill in Summer 2015 still. This was disappointing, but at least they gave us a date to hold on to (June 2). Recently though, some GameStop employees had the misfortune of being given the privilege of informing folks that the June 2 release date was being moved to December 31, New Year’s Eve. They also quietly adjusted the release date on their website. Sneaky, sneaky.
Last-gen consoles are in an uncomfortable limbo right now: they’re still powerful enough to run certain games, but they also present hardware limitations that developers have to dance around. What this results in is watered-down, inferior ports that lack what makes the game so awesome in the first place. Developers are all racing to push the limits of newer consoles’ capabilities, and prettifying everything for the more powerful generation means less time accommodating the last generation. Many of 2015’s big releases are still holding on, but we can tell that they’re feeling the pressure to drop the old hardware.
It’s understandable, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are no longer the competitive standard. Newer games are slowly leaving the last-gen platforms behind, but some pretty good developers still string us along for a bit longer. Let’s be honest, they aren’t having a hard time selling games to us. Yet they still seem to feel that they have to accommodate the older platforms just to maximize their sales. Much as it hurts to say it, we’d rather not be strung along if we’re going to get dumped on the curb once we’ve fallen in love with a franchise that will eventually leave us behind.
Right now, it is unclear how far along Mortal Kombat X for the older platforms is. NetherRealm Studios’ creative director Ed Boon did say that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were not their priority for this release, and it looks like they're sticking to their word. Ouch.
