TouchIT

When Warner Brothers Interactive acquired the Midway Juegos catalog in 2009, one of its first priorities was to revitalize the library’s cornerstone title, Mortal Kombat. On the eve of the first installment of the legendary franchise to launch under the WBI banner, the client identified an urgent need to upgrade the existing Mortal Kombat site and provide its users with an online experience that met the needs of fighting-game fans. A more robust, statistics-driven and character-driven online experience was essential, built on a more streamlined and efficient architecture than was currently in place.

The ultimate goal was to increase user interaction and site traffic by delivering an extensible destination that would keep fans engaged in the franchise for future releases. We accomplished this by providing a home for additional downloadable content, new characters and character environments, leaderboards and game stats.

Faced with a tall order on a short time line, we stepped into the ring and applied a few finishing moves of our own, starting by integrating Agora’s Hydra application programming interface with the existing site.  This allowed registered visitors to be driven to the site from within the game and to view their stats as well as see top players on the leaderboards.

The next phase of the site overhaul involved creating an online home for the incoming downloadable content that was forward compatible for future updates. We added designs for four exclusive online characters — Skarlet, Kenshi, Rain and Freddy — each with its own page and downloadable content. These character’s pages were tied to the individual release dates for the characters within the game.

Once the downloadable content pages were built out, we modified the site’s main home page by adding a tab for the content to the main nav, making it easy to access. We also utilized the marketing promo box on the home page to promote the new content and integrated leaderboards and stat info to update with new characters. To top it off, we implemented a unique background on the site’s home page with each drop.

Mortal Kombat was released in April 2011 to sales that exceeded even the most optimistic expectations with the first month sales exceeding 1 million units. And with total sales of nearly 3 million units, Mortal Kombat generated enough revenue on its own to pay for the Warner Brothers Interactive’s acquisition of the entire Midway catalog.