Like a water salesman in the desert, he can charge you a literal arm and a leg - and you'll cough it up, because you need his product. Okay, okay, it's 'just wrestling', but all the same, it's always been so much more than that. Apply such a model to the modern-day wrestling game climate, and 2K are the only people supplying the fluids, whilst the rest of us whither and doubt, before ponying up the cash anyway. When game development was a far cheaper and more freeing affair than the multi-million dollar budgets that cripple all artistic freedom in 2015, we had at least had Anchor Inc. (who? Exactly) putting out the woeful WWF Raw series on Xbox, or Nintendo's Wrestlemania franchise, providing a solid 'console war'-style setup to get everyone outdoing one another. Granted, Yukes were behind both Smackdown and Wrestlemania, but it didn't stop them trying out new features in one, before implementing them in the other, eventually giving fans on all sides the best experience. Now the WWE is simply too big and pricey to afford to split revenue across multiple platform exclusives. 2K want all the cash, all the time, and they're not about to do a deal with Microsoft, just to segment their developer base and establish some good ol' fashioned competition. However, like in every scenario where something is being offered to the public, healthy competition only breeds a better product for all involved. 2K having the monopoly on the license only benefits filling their coffers.
