The cover athlete for WWE 2K18 has been revealed, nearly a month after a Take-Two earnings report confirmed the game was in development. And anyone who’s been keeping tabs on WWE programming in recent months probably won’t be surprised to hear Seth Rollins is stepping up to replace perennial WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar for this year’s WWE 2K release.
Rollins’ cover athlete duties were announced as part of a Sportscenter guest appearance on Monday. WWE has used its own events to reveal WWE 2K covers in recent years, whether it’s during Monday Night Raw or during the festivities surrounding SummerSlam, but likely jumped at the opportunity to reveal the cover on a much larger platform. Getting some free press for the “sports entertainment” organization and WWE 2K18 probably didn’t hurt either. Unfortunately, the announcement didn’t include any updates on the WWE 2K18 roster or planned features for the game. But Sportscenter probably wouldn’t have been the right place for those reveals.
Monday’s announcement also gave us a timeline for the debut of WWE 2K18. It’s still not clear whether or not the PC version of the game will emerge alongside the console builds, or if Steam users will be forced to wait several months (as they have in previous years). But WWE 2K18 will hit an unspecified number of platforms on Oct. 17. Given that timeline, it’s probably safe to assume we’ll see the first big batch of roster announcements during SummerSlam weekend. This will likely be followed by the weekly roster reveals IGN has been publishing since the WWE 2K franchise was still the Smackdown series.
Sadly, there’s still no word on when we can expect to see some WWE 2K18 gameplay. It’s always possible WWE is saving that reveal for its own programming and/or that a WWE 2K18 gameplay trailer is coming soon. But anyone hoping this might be the year when 2K, Yuke’s and Visual Concepts are more communicative about their annual wrestling series is probably going to be disappointed by how little we know roughly four months before the game debuts.
WWE 2K18 is in development for PC and consoles. There’s no word on a release date yet.
Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for more WWE 2K18 news in 2017 and however long 2K supports WWE 2K18 after launch.
