WWE 2K23

The premise of the series is to emulate the sport of professional wrestling, and more specifically, that of WWE. The games were originally published by THQ and developed by Yuke's. 2K Sports took over as publisher beginning with 2013's WWE 2K14, and the series was co-developed with Visual Concepts until Yuke's departure in 2018. The series engine was originally based on the one used by the Japanese Toukon Retsuden, which was also developed by Yuke's. The series rebranded with 2004's WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw, following the introduction of the brand extension, which saw WWE's roster divided between the SmackDown and Raw brands; the latter named after WWE's flagship program, Monday Night Raw. Just Bring It in 2001. Yuke's studios in Yokohama, Japan worked with WWE writers to create storylines for the "Season" modes of each game since 2005's WWE SmackDown! vs. That year, THQ took over as the Japanese publisher and rebranded the Exciting Pro Wrestling series under the western name. 2006's WWE SmackDown vs. Take-Two confirmed the acquisition in February, saying that it would also retain the services of Yuke's and the THQ staff that worked on the WWE series. Most of the later games, from WWF SmackDown! 2: Know Your Role to WWE SmackDown vs. With WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2007 new game mechanics were introduced, in which a new control scheme altered the grappling system of the game, called "Ultimate Control moves". Unlike the previous games, where the player pressed two buttons to perform a grapple or an attack, players were able to place their opponents into a grapple position and then choose to perform a move by moving the directional buttons of their system's controller. Raw 2008, in order for players to force a character to submit, they had to tap buttons to move a marker towards the end of the meter labeled "Submit", and the only way for opponents to escape was for them to move the meter towards "Escape".