Over the last 20 years, Japanese developer Yuke’s have been the main developer behind all World Wrestling Entertainment-licensed games under THQ and, after the publisher’s closure, 2K Games. Today, Yuke’s and 2K confirmed that further WWE titles in the WWE2K series, starting with WWE 2K20, will no longer be developed by the Osaka-based studio.
Website Video Games Chronicle received a statement from 2K confirming the news. For the past few titles, Yuke’s had been co-developing with Visual Concepts, based in Novato, California, which is now taking over the series as the lead studio. Visual Concepts also handles 2K’s basketball series, NBA 2K, so it appears they will be transformed into a two-game studio.
Yuke’s developers had been suggesting for a while that the time-pressure on WWE games was causing quality to suffer, an issue often brought up by fans of the games. The studio has been working on an original wrestling game alongside their WWE titles and also worked on the recent Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain.
WWE 2K20 releases on October 22 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
[Source: Video Games Chronicle]
Source: Game Informer 2K And Yuke's Split On WWE Franchise