WWE 2K23 announced its official roster earlier this week, but it wasn’t long before some changes had to be made. The first came via Johnny Gargano announcing that, despite being absent from the official roster on 2K’s website, he would be a playable character at launch. A few more changes have since been noticed by fans, including a wrestler being pulled from the roster while others have had their name updated to indicate the game will feature their current gimmick.
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While Scarlett recently made her in-ring debut for WWE and was listed on the roster, she has since been pulled from it. This is, according to WrestleZone, because she’ll actually only be a manager for Karrion Kross in the game. Maximum Male Models’ MA.CE and MAN.SOOR, Los Lotharios’ Angel and Humberto and Seth (Freakin’) Rollins have all had their names updated as well. Given that the game will be released in a month, these were all likely corrections to the roster announcement rather than major changes made by the developers.ย
WWE 2K23 Developers on Competition From AEW Fight Forever
WWE 2K23ย Creative Developer Lynell Jinks recently spoke withย WCCF Techย and discussedย how the game will compete with AEW’s first console video game release,ย AEW Fight Forever.
“We bounced back with 2K22, and you look at the reception we received, that game was kind of like wrestling in a nutshell, right? It’s, like, the comeback story. Now we’re trying to keep our spot on top and we have competition coming, and it’s even more important for us to keep thinking outside of the box and improving every single year,” Jinks said.
“I love competition,” he added. “I started on NBA 2K, I spent 10 years on it, and at that time, we were going against NBA Inside Drive. Then we were going against [NBA] ShootOut and NBA Live, and every year, we would look at what they did and be, like, ‘that’s interesting’ or ‘they did this better than us.’ That only makes our games better. Same thing you can say about wrestling in general — having competition, to me, it’s no coincidence that the storylines [in WWE] have been the best they’ve been in a long time. I think it’s because of that competition. It’s the same with video games. I’m looking forward to seeing what they’re gonna do that’s going to drive us to be even stronger.”
