Despite any reports claiming TNA has a lot riding on the upcoming “Impact” video game, a report by The Wrestling Observer Newsletter has confirmed the company has no financial stake in the development of the game for Midway.
Recent news of Midway closing down its Los Angeles development house that was producing the TNA game has caused lots of erroneous reports to make the rounds on various wrestling websites. While that isn’t good news for Midway, it has no affect on TNA Wrestling. A majority of the Midway employees at the L.A. house were given the opportunity to move to the San Diego office. The public reason given was that the move was made to make it easier for the TNA team to work with the San Diego office.
This will not affect the release of the game, which is scheduled for early September. It should be noted that Midway is counting on some big numbers from the game, which some have begun to question. The belief within Midway is that not only will they get the TNA television audience, but people from the “pro wrestling genre” who are looking for something new as opposed to the WWE Smackdown vs. Raw video games. This line of thinking doesn’t necessarily always work as the the thought process has always been if they can get at least 10% of a bigger audience to cross over (such as people who have strictly played WWE games for the last few years) then they will be okay. Whether or not this will work in TNA’s favor remains to be seen.