Mortal Kombat 12, Elden Ring Difficulty, Shredder in All-Star Brawl, and the end of Sega arcades.
Happy Friday, or should I say, happy Pokemon Legends: Arceus release day. If you've had your head buried in your Switch all day, you may have missed some of these big gaming stories. Today, we got a new interview with FromSoftware's Hidetaka Miyazaki about Elden Ring's difficulty and a news from Sega about the future of its arcade business. We also got hints from NetherRealm Studios and Ludosity about the next Mortal Kombat game and Nickelodeon All Star Brawl character, respectively. Without further ado: here are the top gaming news stories from Friday, January 28, 2022.
In an interview with PlayStation Blog, Elden Ring direction Hidetaka Miyazaki said that his team at FromSoftware doesn't "try to force difficulty or make things hard for the sake of it." The director went on to say that they hope players don't feel unfairly punished by FromSoftware's games, which include Bloodborne, Sekiro, and the Dark Souls trilogy. Miyazaki believes that Elden Ring's open world and "freedom to progress through the world or return to a challenge later" will help more people finish this time.
Jonathan Anderson, senior production manager at NetherRealm, tweeted a photo this week that may have leaked confirmation that Mortal Kombat 12 is in development. The photo shows several pieces of concept art from Injustice and older Mortal Kombat games, but if you look closely at the computer screen at the edge of the photo, you can see the words "MK12_Mast". You can also see an email from someone named Christine warning that recipients should be careful with the materials since fans "eagerly scrape the internet" for clues. This would indicate that the "slip" was a planned leak, or possibly even a troll. NetherRealm loves messing with Mortal Kombat players, so there's a good chance that even if Mortal Kombat 12 is on the way, this was all just a well-meaning prank.
The next Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl update will be revealed on February 3, breaking nearly two months of silence from developer Ludosity. Evidence has mounted for some time that Shredder is coming to Brawl soon, and the teaser for the update stream shows two Ninja Turtles and April selected next to a missing character. A tweet from character designer and programmer Thaddeus Crew also mentions "blabbering", which could suggest that voice lines are also on the way.
In a bit of sad news, Sega Sammy has revealed it will be selling the remaining 14.9% of its arcade shares to Geneda Inc, thereby leaving the arcade business entirely. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise given that Sega sold 85.1% of its arcade shares in 2020, but it's still disappointing to hear that one of the original arcade giants is getting out of the game. Luckily, its arcades will remain open as their branding is gradually changed to Geneda's GiGo Entertainment brand.
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Eric Switzer is the Livestream News Editor for TheGamer as well as the lead for VR and Tech. He has written about comics and film for Bloody Disgusting and VFXwire. He is a graduate of University of Missouri – Columbia and Vancouver Film School. Eric loves board games, fan conventions, new technology, and his sweet sweet kitties Bruce and Babs. Favorite games include Destiny 2, Kingdom Hearts, Super Metroid, and Prey…but mostly Prey. His favorite Pokémon is Umbreon.
