I reviewed WWE 2K23 here at TheGamer less than two years ago. The annual wrestling sim was a decent improvement on past entries that showcased a desire for 2K to improve on the experience in a multitude of ways. It also presen💮ted an impressive Showcase Mode focusing on John Cena and a roster that was equal parts current and vast. A solid game, and one t🦂hat fans should be able to return to or try for the first time even years after the fact.
Unfortunately, 2K has other ideas, announcing this week that it will finally be closing down its servers and removing all digital currency and similar ad🐽d-ons from sale ahead of the game in its entirety being pulled from storefronts. You can stil꧂l play with physical copies, which are pretty commonplace at the time of writing, but a game being struck from history less than two years after its initial release sets a terrible precedent. The game is going dark as it leaves WWE 2K24 as the only modern wrestling game left standing.
WWE 2K23 Deserved A Longer Lifespan Than This
It sucks, but I understand the corporate approach that 2K is taking here. WWE games are an annual release, much like EA Sports FC, Madden, or NBA, with teams having less than a year to develop, iterate, market, and launch a new game which needs to stand apart from the one that came before. Oftentimes, that is a difficult thing to manage, with showcase modes, DLC, and rosters being what helps each individual game come into its own. Why would you bother dedicating resources to an older entry and keeping its servers online when yo🐬u would make more money and attract a greater number of players by going hard on the latest?
But this approach defines WWE 2K as nothing more than a product designed to make ample profits, creating a production line where each new game does as little as needed to justify its existence before charging full price and repeating the cycle all over again. If I didn’t work in this industry and was an avera🦋ge joe picking up games myself, I would question whether it is worth paying full price for a game I know has a limited shelf life. Is the time investment that it demands worthwhile when 2K has developed a habit of killing games so quickly? Not at all.
I Feel Bad For Younger Wrestling Fans In The Modern Era
WWE is bigger than ever these days, attracting record attendees at live shows and attracting audiences of millions around the world, a number that is bound to grow even more so as the company makes its Netflix debut. Wrestling fans are everywhere, and the venn diagram that features fans of the squared circle and avid video game players overlaps🤪 considerably.
As a kid, I played c💦ountless wrestling games, ranging from Smackdown: Here Comes The Pain to all the Smackdown vs Raw titles. They were annual products back then too, but thanks to smaller budgets and shorter development times, they were able to innovate and feel unique in ways that just aren’t possible toda💝y.
Combine this more complicated production cycle with the🃏 endless profits of live-service and there is a greater incentive to create a new entry as quickly as possible and milk it for every penny before calling it a day, rather than creating something that truly sticks in the memory. 💝Even if it did, 2K would just pull it from sale and take the servers offline anyway.
The existence of all games as soulless products has become more and more transparent in recent years, but its sports titles such as this one make the intentions barbarically obvious. Those eager to spend hundreds on limited editions with all the downlo💎adable content will have only a year or two to get their money’s worth before they have no choice but to move on.
Wrestling fans will want the latest rosters and freshest modes. I understand that much, but it sucks that these games will become impossible to preserve if this attitꦫude doesn’t change. In an age where wrestling is arguably bigger than it’s ever been, I wish the video games made to represent it weren’t so expendable.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: WWE 2K23
- Top Critic Avg: 81/100 Critics Rec: 83%
- Released
- March 17, 2023
- ESRB
- T FOR TEEN: BLOODꦯ, LANGUAGE, SUGGESTIVE THEMES, VIOLENCE
- Developer(s)
- Visual Co🍸ncepts
- Publisher(s)
- 2K
- Engine
- Proprietary Engine
- Franchise
- WWE 2K
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