While NetherRealm is best known for the Mortal Kombat series, let us not forget the excellent Injustice games, which pit DC characters against each other in brutal fights. And now, we know Injustice 2 has been quietly shifting copies faster than the Flash finishes a morning job around the globe.
Word comes from NetherRealm big boss Ed Boon himself. He responded to a fan on BlueSky who shared an image from a 2019 ranking of the top 10 best-selling superhero games. The user asked Ed Boon if Injustice 2 had sold more than 2 million copies, and Boon succinctly replied: “Since we released Injustice 2, it has sold over 9 million copies worldwide.”
To put that nine-million figure into perspective, Injustice 2 isn’t actually all that far behind NetherRealm’s biggest hitters. Mortal Kombat X sold around 12 million copies and Mortal Kombat 11 has surpassed 15 million, while the much newer Mortal Kombat 1 only crossed eight million sales earlier this year. In other words, commercially speaking, Injustice certainly doesn’t look like a series Warner Bros. has an obvious reason to abandon.
Of course, there are some caveats to comparing Injustice 2 sales against Mortal Kombat 1 – Injustice 2 has been around for far, far longer and is very frequently found at extremely discounted prices. That alone will help it sell. Still, 9 million is not something to be ignored.
But that does beg the obvious question: where’s the third game?
Despite Injustice 3 never being formally announced, evidence for it has been piling up for years like Batman piles up thugs. It appeared in Nvidia’s infamous 2021 GeForce Now database leak, while Ed Boon has repeatedly suggested NetherRealm intends to return to the series. Things got considerably more interesting last year when leaker MultiverSusie rather unsubtly teased Injustice 3, before the strongest evidence yet emerged earlier this year: MP1st reported that a Warner Bros. Games artist had explicitly listed Injustice 3 on their résumé, something I covered here at the time. None of that amounts to an official announcement, but combine it with more than nine million sales for Injustice 2, and a third game certainly wouldn’t be difficult to justify.
And that’s especially true when Mortal Kombat 1 has struggled more than the previous entries, perhaps suggesting that the franchise needs to take a short break. Injustice 3 would be a terrific way of doing that.
