NetherRealm planning to diversify this year

NetherRealm Studios may be known for the Mortal Kombat series -- the company logo is a silhouette of Scorpion, after all -- but coming up with new and innovative ways to separate characters from their spines can only take you so far. This year, the company wants to branch out and diversify its game library.

"We want our studio to do more than just make Mortal Kombat games," studio creative director Ed Boon told GameSpot. "We love making them but we also want to do different types of games. Different genres, different IPs."

He says the studio wants to "diversify ourselves, and work on multiple formats, multiple types of games, not just Mortal Kombat games."

We've already seen one tentative step in that direction with Batman: Arkham City Lockdown for iOS. "The Batman iOS game was kind of like us dipping our foot into that whole different types of games to do," Boon said. "We're going to continue in that direction, but I would be surprised if we never did another Mortal Kombat game again."

Boon notes that the healthy sales for Mortal Kombat mean he would be "surprised" if the studio doesn't release another MK game at some point. We've heard reports that the next game is slated for 2013 along with a movie adaptation, which means 2012 will give NetherRealm a nice chance to spread its wings a bit.