It's sold about 20m copies (across MKX and MK11) in the same amount of time that SFV has sold 5m.
Mortal Kombat is huge.
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Which is more popular these days... STREET FIGHTER or MORTAL KOMBAT
- Thread starter mavericktopgun
- Start date
It's sold about 20m copies (across MKX and MK11) in the same amount of time that SFV has sold 5m.
Mortal Kombat is huge.
Good thing the thread title says 'these days', eh?
it's Mortal Kombat by a long shot.
Because maybe MK sales are concentrated in one region and so worldwide SF is bigger and more popular. Also one selling more does not mean it is most well known or more popular than the other, since people who don't buy games at all may still recognize and like one of the franchises more thanks to movies, cameos, pop culture references, costumes, arcades, whatever they played when back then and so on.
That said, I also think it's Mortal Kombat.
One actually sells and has casual market appeal.
one actually has had several Hollywood movies
The other had an atrocity of a film.
it's a question people already knew the answer to.
one actually has had several Hollywood movies
The other had an atrocity of a film.
it's a question people already knew the answer to.
Street Fighter is but a shadow of its former self while Mortal Kombat has been able to stay in the mind of people across the decades.
Wow really surprised MK is popular for some reason. I never knew it was a mainstream series. I guess I'm in a bubble.
I might be wrong, but I feel like in the US at least MK was always more popular after MK2.
Me and my best friend preferred SF2 but in the arcades, at least where I lived, MK was way more popular until 3D fighters took over.
Currently I agree with most of the posts that MK is way more popular (in the US at least) currently.
I feel like MK was more popular in the US once MK1 came out in arcades.
"oh we could kill our opponents?"
it kept the street fighter cabinet lines very short.
"oh we could kill our opponents?"
it kept the street fighter cabinet lines very short.
One got The Legend of Chun Li with Chris Klein, and the other got a movie with Hiroyuki Sanada.
Im in the UK and most friends I know who are casual gamers know and buy MK. Most either don't like/have not heard of street fighter.
I feel like there is a generational gap here as well with some people in this thread. Also the bizarre 'MK only matters in the US'. I'm sure if you broke it down by region MK outsells street fighter In most continents barring Asia.
I went to look up sales figures and apparently MK11 was straight up banned in Japan and multiple other regions, and it still sold double the amount of copies of Street Fighter V? That's pretty crazy.
Mortal Kombat by far in Brazil. Street fighter is popular too among older people who played Street Fighter 2 at its peak, but MK skews younger and have a somewhat broader appeal (maybe because of the violence).
MK had a chance to overtake SF in popularity after MKII, and it arguably did briefly. People were getting tired of SFII updates after it peaked with Hyper Fighting in 1992. The original MK was a novelty, but MKII felt so mysterious and defiant in 1993.
Then the movies came out. Street Fighter in 1994 and Mortal Kombat in 1995. They both performed similarly at the box office but MK made more money. And both were critically panned, but I think MK was more of the crowd favorite.
Mortal Kombat lost all momentum with MK3 though. A major disappointment at the time. UMK3 was much better received by hardcore fans, but it was too little too late for the general public.
Street Fighter bounced back that year with Street Fighter Alpha. A breath of fresh air after years of SFII. And while the live-action Street Fighter movie wasn't well received, the animated movie and Street Fighter II V were acclaimed.
By the time X-Men vs. Street Fighter hit arcades in 1996, MK was honestly an after thought. Never mind Street Fighter Alpha 2 the same year, one of the best fighting games of all time. Street Fighter wasn't competing with MK anymore, it was competing with Tekken. Mortal Kombat wouldn't be seen as a genuine SF competitor again until MK9.
Anecdotal I admit but I never heard anyone talking about SF like the do MK. Even my non gaming family and friends are pretty hyped for the new movie. I think SF is more popular in the FGC but MK has a much wider reach
These days? Mortal Kombat, no question. It has grown in popularity over the past decade and had its two best-selling entries to date on Gen 8 consoles, while Street Fighter declined in popularity this past generation. MKX has sold 11 million copies and MK11 has sold 8 million so far. Meanwhile, Street Fighter V has sold only about 5 million. In Gen 7 Street Fighter was ahead, with SFIV selling 9 million and MK9 selling only 6 million (and was itself the best-selling MK game ever at the time).
Now, that's just commercial performance of individual games, mind you. If you want to use other metrics for success, I can't help you.
Now, that's just commercial performance of individual games, mind you. If you want to use other metrics for success, I can't help you.
These games like MK3, Trilogy, MK4, the PS2 era games were selling millions of copies. I am skeptical any Street Fighter was out selling them. Trilogy has to be one of the best selling fighting games in that generation.
Mortal Kombat's parent company went bankrupt. Midway Games doesn't exist anymore. Mortal Kombat's very existence was up in the air until Time Warner stepped in and threw big corporate dollars into creating NRS.
The first game with that big international conglomerate budget was MK9, a game that sold less than Street Fighter IV despite coming two full years after the fighting game renaissance that SFIV started (a renaissance that allowed MK9 to thrive in the first place). That game's story mode sowed the seed for MK's prominence today, however.
Let us not revise history in this thread. For the general public, MK faded out of relevance after 1995 and didn't return to relevance until the 2010s. Street Fighter also faded out of relevance for a while, but its fade lasted about 10 years instead of over 15.
Mortal Kombat since the original came out no question about it. And it's only broadened its appeal.
People cared less about Street Fighter 3 and EX than they did about the 3D MK clunkers. Deception actually got good scores somehow.
People cared less about Street Fighter 3 and EX than they did about the 3D MK clunkers. Deception actually got good scores somehow.
US sales from 1995 to 2007. MK appears several times while SF doesnt appear once.
Once again seeing how the US is the largest video game market that didn't ban MK (China banned MK along with Japan and some other countries). The bulk of sales would be coming from the US first of possibly Canada and maybe Mexico. 2nd the UK and EU wouldn't even amount to a full percentage of MK sales due to the fact that if you follow UK sales in general those number are typically not that high to begin with even by comparison. Japan being the third largest market for video games banned the game so you can get a general idea where these games sold the most in over all. Australia and South Korea also banned the game so there is another market lost right there and then. Plus if you considered the fact the game was partially banned in German the distribution and sale numbers are smaller than what most people think. Even if the game was number one in the UK at it's time of release and was in the PSN top 20 most downloaded games those numbers are still smaller than North Americas. Street fighter the game itself may have fallen off in regards thanks to some mismanagement throughout the last few years but the characters are still world wide recognized for the most part. Ryu has been in like a ridiculous amount of cross overs and is still relevant to this day. The Bulk of the fan base for MK is in the US to begin with and if we go by percentages in regards to amount of people who buy games over all the US percentage skews that quite hard. I am sure MK is well known in other countries as well but when you factor the sheer amount of people who bought here in the US it totally Skews that percentage. It'd be like if China jumped into the fray and was like "Hey insert game here is more popular than these are because we have the people numbers to back it up. "
(Once again I love the attention MK has gotten as it's my favorite fighting game aside from like SNK stuff, and Darkstalkers, but I can't deny street fighters legacy)
www.statista.com
(Once again I love the attention MK has gotten as it's my favorite fighting game aside from like SNK stuff, and Darkstalkers, but I can't deny street fighters legacy)
Top gaming countries by revenue 2022 | Statista
The United States, China, and Japan are the biggest gaming markets worldwide. The gap to the next-ranked gaming market, South Korea, is almost 18 billion USD.
www.statista.com
Chun Li and Ryu might be riding the coattails of their SF2 fame but the MK Ninjas are not far behind. As an entire franchise, its no contest: MK by leaps and bounds.
I don't think this is true man. MK was not the cause of Midway's fall. If anything, MK was their only franchise keeping them afloat. Mk fell from it's height, but it really never went away and kept selling solid. I thought all those PS2 era games were shit, but they still sold, which warranted new constant new releases. These sold. More than Street Fighter. SF interest did not warrant this amount of new games (or Capcom was ignorant or hesitant to try) in this time period.
Just look at the releases of the main line stuff.
92, 93, 95, 96, 97 for the up to Mk4 era. Then DA in 02, Deception in 04, Monks in 05, Armageddon in 06, MKvsDC in 08, then the 3 years to MK9/WB era in '11. Then it really blew up again. Cause WB knew what they had and invested bigger.
The MK ninjas are popular and people know about them.
I am not even a MK guy, but the casual gamers I know, when they reference Mortal kombat, they are talking about the new games for the most part (which makes sense, they have sold a bunch). When referencing SF, it's always seems it's the memories of SF2 era (when it was fucking huge). This is why Capcom always dips into the nostalgia well.
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I'm not saying MK is the reason for Midway's demise. I know they were the only thing keeping the company afloat (NBA Jam, RIP). I'm just saying MK was not at its MK2 height in the late 90s and the first decade of the 2000s.
Street Fighter also wasn't at its SFII peak, but it continued to dominate arcades until they died in the West in the early 2000s. The home market was never SF's primary business, despite selling gangbusters on 16-bit consoles. And this was doubly true in the mid to late 90s, when Capcom barely bothered porting SF to consoles not made by Sega.
This is why I maintain that Tekken was SF's true competition in this period. Tekken was COLOSSAL at home (thanks to the rise of PlayStation) AND huge at the arcade. Capcom's neglect of the home market sidelined Street Fighter for a decade after arcades went away.
MK has two things that sell it that SF doesn't. A massive budget and the cheese factor (excessive gore). One of these SF could easily have if Capcom put a little more faith in the brand, but the other will just never happen and will probably be the reason MK will stay on top until people get bored of fatalities (very unlikely).
I feel than in all America (That's it, from Canada to Chile) Mortal Kombat has been more popular since the 90's.
I don't know if Scorpion or Sub Zero are more iconic than Ryu though although I guess that Ryu (and Chun Li for the matter) have the advantage that their IP doesn't have any controversies or problematic themes to the level than MK has so is easier to plaster them in crossovers and merchandising
I don't know if Scorpion or Sub Zero are more iconic than Ryu though although I guess that Ryu (and Chun Li for the matter) have the advantage that their IP doesn't have any controversies or problematic themes to the level than MK has so is easier to plaster them in crossovers and merchandising
Capcom can't compete with MK in the budget department. MK has ATT money. ATT has a whole streaming platform, HBO Max, to promote Mortal Kombat. That movie is streaming at home this April and good or bad it will raise MK's profile some more because everybody will see it, because what else are we going to do while being stuck at home.
Love both, but when push comes to shove I'm a Mortal Kombat fan. Lived it. Breathed it. Routinely pose my Sub-Zero desk figure into new stances. Making snowballs and pretending I'm a cyromancer. Randomly saying "flawless victory" to myself on the drive home. Etc.
I think Street Fighter has a bit more mainstream potential and definitely a more dedicated hardcore following, but Mortal Kombat in general just has a bigger overall mindshare and more of a blockbuster presence.
Budget is not really relative. I'm not saying a new SF game should cost billions of dollars, but MK games, even if they suffer from crunch, look and feel like blockbuster triple-A games with plenty of funding and time spent on them. Monster Hunter World was Capcom just shoveling money at MH to see how it would do and that's the best selling Capcom game in history, even if you counted every version of SFII as one SKU. RE7 is Capcom putting time and money into that game to remove it from the association it had during RE5/6 and now the series is as big as it was in the PSX era, if not more-so. Capcom doesn't need to match the budget of MK to compete with it, they just need to treat SF like the triple-A fighter it should be and it will rise. SFIV proves SF can be a 10+ million seller, maybe not as fast as MK but certainly better than FighterZ or Tekken or any other fighting game in the way.
No disagreement from me there. They can and should put genuine AAA money behind SF. It's probably the best investment they could make since SF habitually retains players and generates revenue for over five years.
Yes, in the non western country Brazil the rule is
KOF > MK >>>> SF
And i say this as someone who prefers a good SF like alpha 3
It is interesting how MK keeps getting bigger even if being Rated R stops it from having collaborations like this one
KOF > MK >>>> SF
And i say this as someone who prefers a good SF like alpha 3
It is interesting how MK keeps getting bigger even if being Rated R stops it from having collaborations like this one
I mean, I agree with this. SF nor MK have reached their 90's peaks, But nowadays, MK is way closer than SF to that. Capcom did blow it cultivating the console market scene and Tekken ate their lunch. In my area, Tekken overtook SF in the arcades, and of course Tekken sold alot on home consoles.
I don't think SF need ATT money, it needs RE or MH level money. Capcom has thrown the budgets on those series and has seen the positive results.
They have seen what WB/NRS has done with MK and the budget/time they have given it and the quality/financial rewards that came. idk if they don't believe the SF franchise can do that with a higher budget that what they give it currently, or don't think their fighting game dev teams will live up to the budget? idk.
It ain't hard to tell. MK fills that Deadpool/Logan void among Rated T for Teen fighting games. It's why I maintain MK is bigger among core gamers (a couple rounds of MK11 pairs well with CoD: Warzone) but Street Fighter is more in the pop-cultural mainstream.
This last generation even got me, a huge street fighter fan so annoyed with that exclusivity, that I didn't buy it until years after release and then on PC where I barely play it.
Meanwhile I bought MK 11 day one and all the dlc when it comes out.
Street fighter sort of niched itself a bit.
Meanwhile I bought MK 11 day one and all the dlc when it comes out.
Street fighter sort of niched itself a bit.
Speaking of SF and MK, here is one of the best fan mashups.
youtu.be
Mortal Kombat vs Street Fighter 3 Remastered | By Proxicide
An exclusive version of Proxicide's animation. Native widescreen and HD. No stretching.The best MK animation ever, without a single doubt. With beautiful mus...
youtu.be
MK is HUGE in South America
Since when? People barely play KOF in brazil these days LMAO.