Tampa Bay, Florida hosted night one of WrestleMania on Saturday, while the weather may not have been ideal; the WWE Universe returned in full force. 2K announced on Twitter this past week that some kind of announcement would be happening during WrestleMania weekend, then after the Raw Tag Team Championship 2K delivered.

A vignette is shown of Rey Mysterio, as it continues Mysterio walks into the WWE Thunderdome with WWE Superstar Cesaro in the ring. Mysterio is shown hitting Cesaro with a counter move that sets up the legendary 6-1-9 finishing move. The teaser ends with the WWE 2K22 logo and the words “it hits different” followed by “coming soon”.

WWE fans have had a love hate relationship with the 2K games, but a growing frustration with move sets, mobility, and glitches that absolutely baffled the audience forced 2K to take a year and redesign the franchise. This past year 2K tried to “right the ship” and released a fun arcade style WWE game called 2K Battlegrounds. 2K could use some of the techniques they created for 2K Battlegrounds into the next iteration of WWE 2k. One of the biggest complaints in WWE 2K19 was the controls; the timing of finishers never made any sense in context to the match. We need a grappling system that actually makes sense, and we also need a reverse system that is fair. On the off chance that someone from 2K reads this article, I want to make this really easy; simplify the game. Us WWE fans want to live out our dream match cards, and make our favorite WWE Superstar a Champion. I think for 2K to win fans over, they need to make the game simple but fun; create big back and forth matches, make a GM mode that isn’t just simulating each week til a pay per view, and give us moves that the superstars actually use.

I think 2K needs to pay attention to the details as well; for instance no two superstars hit the same move identically. If you look at the WrestleMania main event it features Roman Reigns and Edge; two superstars who use the “spear” as their finishing move. Edge hits the spear completely different from how Roman does, Edge relies on momentum from running halfway across the ring to make the spear hit more impactful. Roman is an athletic freak who can hit his spear with two steps and make it feel like he just knocked the wind out of his opponent. 2K needs to pay attention to the little things while still making the overall game awesome.

When will WWE 2K22 release? In the trailer the only detail is that it is “coming soon”, we can safely assume that this game has been in development for two years based on the release of WWE 2K19. WWE will want this game to release near a big pay per view to allow proper promotion; with this in mind I think we need to look at August. WWE is about to reset their story lines after WrestleMania and with a potential “Superstar Shakeup” looming over the roster the best possibility to give fans a huge pay per view is the party of the summer known as Summer Slam. Typically Summer Slam is held towards the end of August and that is why I think 2K will release the game the first week of September. September gives 2K plenty of time to showcase new features and game modes, as well as play throughs with WWE Superstars.

What do you think of the WWE 2K22 trailer? Comment below or tweet us @BossRushNetwork and be sure to follow our wrestling show @RopeTalkBRG for all the latest news!