Following last night's Full Gear pay-per-view event, AEW president Tony Khan told the press that there were plans in the work for two video games based on his upstart wrestling league. The company also known as All Elite Wrestling started running events in 2019, airing Dynamite weekly on the TNT network alongside a quartet of PPV events throughout the calendar year. They are the first promotion with enough funding to take on the dominance of WWE in the pro wrestling scene since the closure of World Championship Wrestling in the 1990s, and their growing popularity naturally leads to expanding into the video games market.
Several wrestlers currently plying their trade in AEW are well known in the gaming community. Kenny Omega has appeared frequently at eSports and gaming events around the country, often furthering his rivalry with WWE talent and UpUpDownDown host Austin Creed. In its first year, the company ran an event called Fyter Fest in conjunction with CEO, a popular fighting game event held annually in Orlando, Florida. During that show, Kenny teamed with the Young Bucks for a Street Fighter-inspired entrance that perfectly recreates Akuma's iconic entrance into the game. Omega also appeared as Sans from Undertale on a Haloween themed episode of AEW Dynamite.
WrestleZone reported on the press conference where Tony Khan gave more information about the upcoming announcements concerning AEW's entrance into the video games market this Tuesday. The president of the company revealed that there is work underway on at least two separate releases. One will be a "best in class" console release offering wrestling similar to other sports titles like WWE 2K. The other will be a title aiming for cell phones that provides a simulation experience of managing a wrestling league and put shows together. Khan also promises more titles to come after these two initial releases.
The landscape of wrestling video games has not been great for quite a few years. While 2K's series of WWE simulators has its fans, the last game in the series was received so poorly by the vast majority of players that the title skipped a year to attempt to get things back on track. In 2020, the company instead released WWE 2K Battlegrounds an arcade-style wrestling game that's limited in scope and filled with microtransactions. Outside of WWE, while there have been attempts at providing an alternative wrestling experience for gamers, no titles have emerged as legitimate contenders.
Much like the emergence of AEW Dynamite spiked interest in the sport for a certain group of fans on TV, a new game based on the renegade league could bring players back to the genre. With former WWE wrestlers like Cody Rhodes, Miro, Chris Jericho, and more on their roster, All Elite Wrestling has a good chance of reeling in fans of the N64 era of wrestling games, and those in charge have heavily hinted that they're working with the developers of those games on this new project. Whatever the team has prepared, it will be one more gaming event to remember this Tuesday.
Source: WrestleZone