Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says the WWE 2K series has the potential to double or triple its audience.
The latest game in the series, WWE 2K26, was critically well received and Take-Two says “recurrent consumer spending” on the game is up 20% compared to the previous year’s game.
In an interview with IGN, however, Zelnick stated that the game could grow much larger than it currently does, if developer Visual Concepts continues to innovate with each annual iteration.
“We’re very proud of the Metacritic score, we’re proud of how the title performed,” he said. “We have great partners at TKO led by Nick Khan, and of course everything related to WWE continues to grow. The team over there is just crushing it. So we’re thrilled to be in business with TKO and WWE.
“I do think there’s ongoing opportunities to improve the quality of the game. I do think that we can give consumers more of what they want. And I know our team at Visual Concepts always wants to do better. We’re never in the business of patting ourselves on the back.
“We believe that arrogance is the enemy of continued success. And I think that title could be double or triple the size that it is as long as we delight consumers, and as long as we give them something new and not expected that’s consistent with the brand that they love. That’s our job.”
VGC’s WWE 2K26 review called it the best entry in the series to date, but noted that it didn’t innovate too much over the 2K25 edition and still had room for improvement.
“WWE 2K26 offers another net gain over its predecessor, ensuring the series continues to evolve in a positive direction,” we said.
“While its new reversal system will initially divide players and the spectre of microtransactions continues to loom over MyFaction, the overall package introduces more quality-of-life features to ensure each of its numerous modes is better than it was last time.”
Last month it was reported that Take-Two had laid off some employees at WWE 2K series developer Visual Concepts, marking the third year in a row it had done so.
