Yuke's Recalls Wrestle Kingdom For Xbox 360

Yuke's Ltd, long-time Japanese wrestling game developer (WWE: Smackdown Vs. Raw for Western audiences, co-developer with Konami on Rumble Roses XX), has announced the recall of its first Xbox 360 title Wrestle Kingdom, which was released yesterday in Japan. According to a report on the company's Japanese website, the game is not saving properly to the hard drive, and indeed, at times the game cannot even recognize that a hard drive is present, leading to significant technical issues. As a result, a comprehensive recall is underway to replace Wrestle Kingdom from all Japanese retailers. However, Yuke's has assured consumers that the game itself runs without problems, and existing save data on the hard drive is not affected – further, the game can be properly saved using the external memory unit. Users who already purchased the game can return it directly to Yuke's for replacement, and the release event, planned for December 23 and 24, has been cancelled. Incidentally, Yuke's has recently been active in somewhat surprising ways in Japanese wrestling circles - the company acquired a controlling stake in the New Japan Pro Wrestling league, meaning that a game company now controls the wrestling league on which it bases many of its games. This unfortunate occurrence is a minor additional complication to the Japanese launch of the Xbox, which has debuted to initially restrained sales, partly due to the continued delay of one-time launch title and key Japanese franchise Dead Or Alive 4, which is still officially due to release before the end of 2005.