For long years I've argued that the Smackdown vs. Raw series is in need of a serious overhaul, that the gameplay needed something else than false attempts at realism (such as the Stamina system) and little bells and whistles that show up in one match out of twenty. Each and every year, people buy or rent the game, create their superstar, take them thorough the necessary trials in order to make them equal or superior to John Cena, HHH and the Undertaker (the highest stat superstars in the game, historically), and eventually grow bored of it down the line, only to repeat the cycle again.

I first started slowing down my wrestling game purchases with Smackdown : Here Comes The Pain - Arguably the best wrestling title Yuke's has developed for the WWE. However, others go further back for their wrestling game nostalgia with WWF No Mercy, Aki Corp. (now syn Sophia)'s last WWE branded game. Aki Corp, whom you may remember as the people who brought the Def Jam Vendetta/Fight For New York games as well as some of the Gamecube/PS2 era Kinnikuman/Ultimate Muscle games (and if you don't remember those, it's perfectly understandable - the games were far better than the second generation anime's translation).

So, I was perusing VGChartz (some of you may scoff at this suggestion, but I've yet to find an alternative for PS2 era sales charts) to write this article, trying to paint a negative picture of the current state of wrestling video games. I figure : "Hah! With the decline in quality (although the 2010 title was quite good in it's own right and shows signs that the franchise is getting better) in current titles, surely the games mustn't have sold as well as my beloved Here Comes The Pain!"

Turns out, I was wrong. Well, not entirely wrong : Here Comes The Pain had a great run at 2,56 million sold, and none of the current gen titles have come even close to that on one single console, barely selling a million, and not even if we are talking about the 2010 edition. However, after that year, the Smackdown vs. Raw series were now multi-platform titles. Counting all sales, they almost outsell HCTP by a million, total sales being 3,66 million for this year's edition (if you want a good comparison, this year didn't have a lot of advertisement in gaming press, and as such, there was less sales than the 2009 edition).

So, the product goes down in quality (in my eyes), but they sell more. What am I to do except admit defeat?