2K promised more news about WWE 2K22 at SummerSlam, and it delivered – though maybe not in the way some expected. A new trailer for the game revealed a handful of new Superstars, but it also slipped in a release date right at the end: March 2022. That came as quite a shock to those of us waiting for the game. So far, WWE 2K22 has followed the same path as previous entries in the series- an announcement at WrestleMania followed by a more extensive trailer at SummerSlam. However, the final step on that journey is usually a Fall launch, not this delay until late Spring.
It's probably unfair to call 2K22's March launch a 'delay' since it was never officially confirmed it would be here by October, that was just an assumption we had all made. Nevertheless, fans reacted to the March 2022 release date in a variety of ways, and most of them negative. Some are angry that they will have to wait five more months, especially since this will be the first in the main series since 2019. Others pointed and laughed, assuming 2K22 is already plagued with the same issues that resulted in WWE 2K20 being such a flop and WWE 2K21's complete cancellation.
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I, on the other hand, welcome the delay. If the last few years of big video game releases have taught me anything, it's that launching a video game based on a release date that was determined months beforehand regardless of whether the game is ready is a terrible idea. The announcement that WWE 2K22 will be here in March rather than October suggests two things to me. One, that it won't be ready by October, but more importantly, that the team behind it is unwilling to launch the game in an incomplete state.
That was the issue with WWE 2K20 and is exactly why the game and the studio behind it became a laughing stock. The game simply wasn't ready when it launched, hence the bugs and issues, some of which rendered it almost unplayable in several modes. If you did manage to play it, the problems were so extensive that you had no choice but to laugh as a Superstar's face melted or they floated six feet above the ring, breakdancing.
As amusing as the memes were at the time, a repeat of anything even close to that will spell disaster for WWE 2K. The series can't afford another slip up. WWE's annual installments have already felt stale for a while, and a far cry from the less graphically realistic but much more popular PS2 and PS3 glory days. It's not necessarily because the team was putting in minimal effort, but because the execs barely allowed them time between one game coming out and the next being built. It just isn't possible to create an all-new game on that scale in the space of 12 months – wrestling is more complex than 2K's other sporting flagship, the basketball sim NBA 2K, and so the yearly release cycle took away from the game's potential. As it grew more complex, what started as the same game with minor tweaks hitting the market each year eventually became more and more unfinished each year, and constantly riddled with bugs.
2K has recognized that in a major way. Not only has it given the team working on its WWE games an additional year to save the series, but it has shown it is making a serious effort to give fans anything less than something it believes will restore faith in what it supposedly does best – even if it means an extra wait. 2K arguably hasn't made a wrestling game to be proud of in years, and maybe not at all if you compare it to iconic wrestling games of the past like WWF No Mercy and the SmackDown games during the late '90s and early '00s.
There's also the not-so-minor matter of AEW to consider. The fledgling promotion, which has been ruffling WWE's feathers quite a bit recently, is currently gearing up for the launch of its own video game. The company's very first, in fact, which is rumored to arrive at around the same time as WWE 2K22. AEW has employed the help of Yuke's, a studio that aided the development of WWE games for decades up until very recently, and has taken inspiration from some of the classic games mentioned above. Another swing and a miss from WWE 2K will be bad. Doing so when a rival company has a potentially industry-shifting alternative on the market would be catastrophic.
Whatever happens, I'm hopeful this will inject new life into wrestling video games. WWE has shown for years that it performs best when under pressure, and also when it has serious competition. That is now very much the case, and it feels like WWE 2K is all too aware of that. If WWE 2K22 is the reboot the series needs, it would be nice to see the studio move to a solid release every two years rather than a shoddy game annually. To take a step back and acknowledge that quality should be valued over quantity. WWE currently pumps out nine hours of programming every single week though, so Vince McMahon taking that approach with anything he has control over seems unlikely.
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