WWE says it's making a wrestling RPG
Austin 3:16 says "I just leveled up"
A WWE RPG is in the works, as Chief Brand Officer (and frequent on-screen personality) Stephanie McMahon confirms in the company’s latest financial report.
WWE “recently signed a new deal in the role-playing game space that will be announced soon,” as McMahon explains in the company’s first quarter earnings call (transcribed by Seeking Alpha).
Austin Creed, known in the ring as Xavier Woods, shared a teasing GIF on Twitter in response to the news. Creed also hosts the Up Up Down Down gaming channel on YouTube, and is a regular host on G4TV.
pic.twitter.com/XP8igUdC1hMay 5, 2022
There are no additional details about the WWE RPG just yet, but McMahon says “gaming is a priority for WWE to reach our next-gen audience with over 80% of WWE's audience self-identifying as gamers.” That’s “next-gen” as in people under 34, not necessarily PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X fans.
McMahon also says that WWE is continuing to “evaluate the metaverse, both walled garden environments that already exist as well as decentralized properties.” Whatever that ends up meaning, we can expect to hear more in “the coming months.”
As for traditional WWE games, McMahon says the company is “extremely pleased” with WWE 2K22. “After taking a little more than a year off to improve the game engine, we worked hand in glove with our partners at Take-Two Interactive, listened to our customers and fans, and earned back their trust by delivering a game that exceeded their expectations.”
McMahon says “WWE 2K22 was a commercial and critical success with the highest Metacritic scores on both Xbox and PlayStation platforms in franchise history with over 5.6 million hours viewed on Twitch to date.”
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An indie wrestling RPG called WrestleQuest was announced during an ID@Xbox showcase earlier this year. While the game features no WWE branding, it does include the likenesses of legendary wrestlers like “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Jake “the Snake” Roberts, and Andre the Giant.
You won’t find many wrestlers just yet, but our list of the best RPG games does include a whole lot of hours of gaming goodness.
Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.