Yuke's Co. Ltd. is a Japanese video game developer based in Osaka. It was established on 26 February 1993 by Yukinori Taniguchi. The company is best known for their development of the WWE video game series, which came to an end after WWE 2K19.
History
Founded in 1993, Yuke's was named after founder Yukinori Taniguchi's high school nickname. The first two games that the company developed were the platform game Hermie Hopperhead and the pro wrestling game Toukon Retsuden.[2] The latter title was a best-seller in Japan.[3] Though Activision purchased the rights to publish the game in North America and began localization work,[3] only the first game was localized, becoming Power Move Pro Wrestling with a different roster of wrestlers.
After a string of successful Toukon Retsuden titles, the company began to develop wrestling games for THQ based on the World Wrestling Federation. They were recommended to THQ by Aki, who had developed their own successful line of wrestling games.[2]
In August 2019, 2K Games announced it had moved WWE 2K game development away from Yuke's to California-based studio Visual Concepts.[4] Earlier that year Yuke's had revealed its frustration over what it had been able to achieve with recent WWE 2K games and suggested that its relationship with publisher 2K Sports was partly responsible. Producer Hiromi Furuta revealed that Yuke's had established a new development team tasked with creating a rival wrestling IP, with the intention of reinvigorating its staff.[5]
Games developed
These are the list of games that the company developed.[6]
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