Report Says AEW Lost At Least $30 Million On Fight Forever Video Game

[Slate Kev]

A new report from the Mike Straw Media YouTube channel claims AEW took a massive financial hit on its 2023 video game Fight Forever, losing at least 30 million dollars that the company had to mark down internally. According to the report the losses stemmed largely from repeated development delays, with the game originally slated for a 2022 release before finally launching in the summer of 2023.

The sales numbers apparently made things worse rather than better once the game did finally ship. Straw says AEW sold only about half of what internal projections expected, which combined with the extended development time to produce a genuinely rough outcome for what was supposed to be the promotion's big entry into the gaming space.

Despite that rocky history, Straw's sources indicate AEW is still interested in revisiting Fight Forever or the franchise more broadly at some point, though nothing concrete is currently in motion. There had also been rumblings of a potential third party licensing conversation, but when Straw reached out directly to AEW sources about it they simply said they had no knowledge of any such talks happening.

AEW Games as a whole has been a bit of a slow burn project since Tony Khan first announced ambitions in that space, and this report is a pretty blunt reminder of how much harder it is to translate a successful wrestling promotion into a successful video game business. Development delays and inflated internal sales expectations are a familiar combination in licensed wrestling games specifically, going back well before AEW even existed as a company.

Whether this changes AEW's appetite for a sequel or a fresh licensing deal down the line remains genuinely unclear given how quiet the company is being about its own future plans here

REPORT: Details About AEW's Video Game Futurewww.fightful.com

[WarningPoint49]

Fight Forever was genuinely fun in short bursts but felt undercooked compared to what a full AAA wrestling game should look like in this current era.
Selling half of projections tracks with that impression honestly, since word of mouth on a game like that spreads fast once people realize the content just is not deep enough to hold attention.

[Kieron93]

Video game development delays blowing out budgets is such an industry wide problem across every genre right now, not just wrestling games specifically. Doesn't make the thirty million dollar number sting any less for AEW specifically, but it is worth remembering this is not some unique failure unique only to them

[Glowing]

AEW sources saying they have no knowledge of any licensing talks is such a classic non answer that basically confirms there is probably something happening behind the scenes that nobody wants to comment on publicly yet

[Wandering Matt]

The half of expected sales detail is the part that would actually worry me if I were running AEW. Delays cost extra money regardless, but if the finished product genuinely could not hit even a fairly modest internal sales target that suggests something deeper wrong with the actual final game itself rather than just bad timing

[Joel96]

Really hope this does not kill any appetite for a genuine sequel because the wrestling game landscape is honestly still pretty thin outside of the WWE 2K series. A finished, more polished follow up to Fight Forever with an actual full roster and better depth could genuinely do well if AEW is patient enough to get the timing and scope right this time

[Grim Tracey]

Thirty million dollars is a genuinely brutal number for a company the size of AEW to eat on one single game. That is not pocket change even for a promotion with Tony Khan's family money behind it, and it makes me wonder how much this quietly shaped some of AEW's other spending decisions over the past couple years.