WWE 2K25 has been officially announced and for most of the world will drop on March 14, 2024.

The Deadman Edition and The Bloodline Edition are scheduled for worldwide release on Friday, March 7, 2025, seven days prior.

The franchise has been delivering with renewed vigour since the disaster of 2K20. After taking a year out of their usual annual release schedule, the games have exceeded expectations since.

Following the hit introduction of War Games last year, new match types and stipulations include the Underground Match, Bloodline Rules Match and intergender matchups this time around.

Players have the largest-ever WWE 2K roster of more than 300 Superstars, Legends and Hall of Famers to have fun with while MyRise returns for a true career mode.

WWE 2K25 will be out for most of the world on March 14 and the franchise are taking things up a notch this year

The new 2K Showcase: The Bloodline’s Dynasty, is the first retelling of the Bloodline saga

However, the talk of the town is the introduction of 2K’s ‘The Island’, which serves the first steps into an open world version of this game.

It’s an interactive world made up of a series of areas built around different WWE themes, where the goal is to earn a WWE contract by impressing Roman Reigns.

Mail Sport had the chance to speak to the 2K developers ahead of the announcement to ask some more questions around what we can expect from the game.

Alex McCarthy: I’d love to ask about the rumours of making this game open world and even if it isn’t, given the wild success of the NBA franchise how could it translate? The Island seems exciting, but what about a true career mode?

Andrea Listenberger: Yeah, I would say get excited for the Island. We’re waiting to really reveal the secrets until a later date. 

But MyRise isn’t going anywhere for this year. You’ve got a unique story on the Island. It’s not like anything you’ve seen in MyRise, and MyRise is still around for 2025. 

What I will say about the Island is, if MyRise is bringing video games to wrestling, the Island story is more like bringing wrestling to video games. And that’s a little bit of the story content that you’ll see there. 

Alex McCarthy: One thing in career mode fans pine for is the ability to add music to be able to create superstar entrances. It was something we were able to do many 15 years ago, but is it something that has been explored? Linking up with Spotify or even just digging deeper into WWE’s catalogue.

Lynell Jinks: It’s something I know we’ve heard so much every single year at these events that we go to from you guys and also from our fan base. We wanted to.

Unfortunately, it’s out of our control because of legal matters and just the way that the music industry (works), and who owns the rights to what.

It’s a hot mess that I don’t understand. I wish I wish we could come to some kind of conclusion on this, because I think it’s cool. But until someone else above our pay grade figures this out, unfortunately, we can’t support it.

Fans will get to explore the legacy of the extended Anoa’i wrestling family, which has dominated our screens for the past four years

A new feature called ‘The Island’ serves the first steps into an open world version of the game

The game will have the biggest roster ever, with more than 300 Superstars, as well as intergender matches

Alex McCarthy: When a franchise has many instalments, how do they keep evolving the move sets, match types and creation? Create-a-finisher etc have been so popular down the years, is the future putting more in the hands of the player to stipulate? 

Derek Donahue: We have a laundry list of match types that we are excited to add to the game. Obviously we have to pick and choose every year, but I’m very excited about the ones that we manage to get in this year.

Underground Match is one I’m extremely excited about. If you think back to war games being a big, how do we possibly put war games in the game, having to rework a lot of our systems – Underground Match is another example of that. 

The idea of a ring without ropes has completely upended how combat works in the game. And that’s something you’re going to feel immediately when you get into the match. The interactions at the edge of the ring are completely reworked and this is something that helps both underground matches and fighting outside the arena in brawl arenas.

So all of those interactions are really fun. And the other huge thing is the spectators around the ringside. I didn’t think we were able to pull it off. But there’s a crowd of people all the way around the ring, they’re reacting, they’re pounding on the mat, they’re moving out of the way when you get thrown out of the ring. It’s mayhem when you’re playing an underground match.

So really excited for that, and bloodline rules, you know, taking a match that is kind of built around the idea of getting backup about run-ins coming in, and a one-on-one match soon turns into a massive brawl. The way the bloodline rules match escalates is extremely exciting to me.

We’ve had an eight-character limit for a long time. So the idea of like, how do we put all these people around the ring. It took a lot of engineering wizardry to get that working, and it’s stuff I’m excited to see us be able to build on in the future. But the line-up we’re able to get to this year, I’m really stoked to see people get their hands on the game, and, just the idea that the ring doesn’t have ropes, it doesn’t have corners.

So much of the game for decades has been built with those assumptions, and we’re talking, not just the player interactions, but the AI and all of that. So being able to kind of build out how combat can work inside the ring. What happens when people are interacting with the edges of the ring? All of that is, it’s got a ton of new animations, a ton of new interactions that I’m really excited to see people do, both in underground matches and in brawls as well.