Yuke's' Takashi Takezawa discusses the game studio's future in wrestling video games.
Yuke's has been heavily involved in creating wrestling video games for nearly three decades. Aside from Japanese exclusives, Yuke's developed the iconic "WWE SmackDown" game series for PlayStation which would later morph into the WWE 2K series.
Yuke's also developed AEW: Fight Forever, the first console release from All Elite Wrestling. Now that the major DLC packs have all been released for AEW's first foray into console gaming, many fans wonder what's next for AEW Games.
Takashi Takezawa, a producer at Yuke's, recently spoke with Video Games Chronicle and revealed that while it is currently uncertain whether or not Yuke's will be part of AEW Games' future, wrestling remains part of the company's DNA and will continue to be central to Yuke's content in the future.
So again, of course, this is one we can’t answer directly. It’s definitely a question for AEW. The concept of the game, of course, is to make it last as long as possible right now – to keep updating. I think we’re sticking with that pretty well," he said. "I think with any game, there are points that people are very satisfied with and points people want to improve in potential future iterations, so I think it’s natural to think about what may be in the future."
Takezawa said that it really boils down to what AEW wants and that it could be a decision made by Kenny Omega, one of AEW's top stars and an avid gamer who was very involved in the creation of Fight Forever.
"That’s really more of a question for AEW. It’s an Omega decision, ultimately; he can probably answer that for you, and depending on what AEW wants to do – nobody knows for sure how Yukes’ involvement will pan out, you know. These kinds of relationships evolve and change over time as well," he said. "We can say that as a development company, even though what Yuke’s does in the future may be a little unclear, I think the one thing that is very clear is that wrestling is part of our DNA and will continue to be a pillar of the company, so we’ll definitely keep making wrestling content in one form or another. But I certainly can’t talk specifics in terms of this series."
It had previously been reported that AEW was strongly considering partnering with a new developer for future releases. Learn more about that here.
Takashi Takezawa previously discussed working on Fight Forever alongside Kenny Omega. Read his comments here
