Um, well I always thought it was they wanted to make a new style, you know, not using characters that are based on ninja's which are not real anymore, but make more "ahead of its time" characters like Jax and the robots. Also the robots were cyber ninja's so maybe they were to replace the human ninja's, but they never came out and gave them there names and saying they are now robots becausalot of Scorpion fans will get really mad if he died and was made into a robot or something.
P.S. And whats with all the hate for Stryker? Why him and none of the others? I liked him, I thought it was cool to finaly have a character with no magic powers, just fighting and weapons, I was kinda pissed when they got rid of him till MK:A really.