San Diego Comic-Con 2016 included a roundtable interview slot with NetherRealm Studios’ Ed Boon focused on the upcoming Injustice 2. This site published a write-up of the talking points from that interview cycle. The post drew six backlinks across the fighting-game press.
With Injustice 2 long since launched (May 2017) and a substantial post-launch DLC roadmap completed, the talking points from that 2016 interview cycle can now be checked against the shipped game.
The 2016 talking points
The publicly-confirmed talking points from Boon’s SDCC 2016 interviews — the ones reproduced in this site’s coverage and across the fighting-game press at the time — included:
- The Gear System would let players customize each character’s loadout with stat-affecting equipment, with both cosmetic and gameplay impact
- The roster would be larger than the original Injustice: Gods Among Us‘s launch roster
- Multiverse mode would replace the original’s S.T.A.R. Labs missions with a procedural challenge system
- A new Mother Box-driven progression system would tie the loot economy together
- The story would directly continue from the first game’s ending
All five of these turned out to be substantially accurate descriptions of the launched game. NetherRealm’s pre-launch communications during summer 2016 were unusually consistent with what shipped — fighting-game pre-launch leaks frequently overpromise mechanics that get cut before release, but Injustice 2 was an exception.
What the post-launch roadmap delivered
Injustice 2 launched May 16, 2017 and received three Fighter Pack DLC waves through 2018, adding nine additional characters: Sub-Zero, Starfire, Red Hood, Black Manta, Raiden, Hellboy, Atom, Enchantress, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (treated as a single fighter slot with all four turtles as alternate variants).
Boon’s SDCC 2016 commentary about the post-launch DLC strategy was less specific than the base-game talking points but did indicate NetherRealm was planning multi-wave character DLC. That commitment held. The TMNT inclusion in particular was widely considered a pleasant surprise even by the fighting-game press that had covered the SDCC cycle closely.
Where the eventual cycle diverged
Two areas diverged from the implicit 2016 framing. First, the competitive-scene support for Injustice 2 was strong at launch but tapered through 2018 and effectively ended in 2019, earlier than the typical NetherRealm post-launch competitive cycle. Second, NetherRealm’s next project after Injustice 2 was Mortal Kombat 11 (April 2019), and the studio has not returned to the Injustice franchise since — a gap now stretching to seven years.
The Mortal Kombat 1 launch in 2023 explicitly closed the door on near-term Injustice 3 development by establishing NetherRealm’s working priority through the mid-2020s. As of early 2026, no announced Injustice sequel exists.
The DC license context
Part of the Injustice franchise’s dormancy reflects shifts in how Warner Bros. Discovery (post-merger) is licensing the DC properties for games. The 2023 release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (Rocksteady) and the 2025 launch of Wonder Woman (Monolith) reorganized DC’s gaming pipeline around different studios with different design directions. Where exactly Injustice 3 would fit in that pipeline is unclear, and Warner Bros’ priorities through the mid-2020s have been elsewhere.
Boon himself has remained vocal on social media about the franchise’s prospects without confirming any active development. The fighting-game community continues to lobby for a third entry. Commercial alignment between NetherRealm’s bandwidth, Warner Bros’ DC strategy, and the broader fighting-game market has not yet produced one.
The interview cycle’s documentary value
The SDCC 2016 interview cycle for Injustice 2 is one of the better-aged examples of fighting-game pre-launch press from the period. The talking points held up. The post-launch roadmap delivered what was implied. The commercial reception (87 Metacritic, strong launch sales) validated the design choices Boon was promoting.
This is in part because NetherRealm’s communications discipline through the late 2010s was unusually high. The studio kept its leak surface tight, made cautious public commitments, and shipped what it had announced. The Injustice 2 cycle is a case study in publisher-press communication done well.
About this URL
The original 2016 post is preserved at this URL via WordPress rewrite from the date-prefixed legacy permalink. This retrospective notes how the SDCC 2016 talking points scored against the shipped game and post-launch roadmap. For fighting-game coverage, see the Reviews section.