WWE 2K17 NXT Edition: is it worth it?

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Many games receive the ‘Collector’s Edition’ treatment, but 2K’s WWE series of video games aren’t usually ones to do so. 2K17 looks to squeeze as much extra cash out consumers as possible this year, with the NXT Edition of the game.Collector’s editions will often be packaged with a plethora of physical items, ranging from commemorative coins and cloth maps to 1:6 scale statues of in-game characters. Some consumers love the inclusion of these items and some see them as little more than plastic tat, but one thing that is widely agreed is that these editions are usually not worth the asking price. Today we’re going to breakdown the contents of the NXT Edition and see how they stack up against the RRP. We’re going to be calculating these prices in GBP.

Let’s start with the facts. In the UK, the NXT Edition will cost you £79.99 and is exclusive to Game. This is the price on the website, and whilst the product may be available in select Game stores, preorders will require a monetary deposit (usually £5), and the price may very well be higher in stores as is usually the case compared to the website. Prices will not be confirmed in store until release day itself, but ordering the game on the website will ensure you pay no more than £79.99, even if the price rises before launch. Game’s website is also known to be temperamental, so you also have factor in ordering from the site does not actually guarantee that you’ll receive a copy of the game. Only 50,000 NXT editions are being released world-wide, so in the case of pre-orders completely filling up, this may make procuring a copy of the edition rather difficult.

What’s actually included in the NXT Edition though? Here’s a list:

A copy of the game

Goldberg preorder DLC

50% MyCareer skill point bonus for NXT

NXT DLC pack

NXT Takeover London mat relic trading card

Autographed Shinsuke Nakamura Canvas2Canvas print

8 inch Demon Finn Balor statue

What are they worth though? Let’s have a look and assign some estimated values. The bulk of the included value is coming from the game included. If you were to purchase the game as a standalone item from Game you would be looking to pay around £50, but that’s at the higher end of the pricing spectrum. Online retailers will likely sell the game for around £43, but most high street and independent game shops will sell 2k17 for an average of £45, so that’s the estimated value we’re going with. The Goldberg DLC is included with any preorder of the base game, regardless of retailer and at no extra cost, so no value will be assigned here. Whilst the skill point and stat boost included will be sold separately for actual money through PSN and Xbox Live, this is merely a timesaver and has no real value, and as such no value will be allocated to it in this instance.

Next, we’ve got the NXT wrestlers DLC pack, which comes with playable versions of Apollo Crews, Nia Jax and Shinsuke Nakamura. The pack is not exclusive to the NXT Edition and will be released for general sale later in the year. DLC packs with five wrestlers in are usually sold for just under £7, but with these wrestlers (especially Nakamura) being fairly notable names I can see this pack being sold for around £5. The next three items are all exclusive to the NXT Edition and are really quite interesting. The first of the three exclusive items is a single trading card of all things. WWE trading cards, for the most part, come in packs including a handful of cards and retail for £1.99. The cards found in these packs have pictures of wrestlers on them in a number of different scenarios with facts and information on the back. If you’re lucky, you may find a card with a genuine autograph from a WWE Superstar inside, or a card with a “Relic” in it. This is either a piece of event worn ring attire, or a piece of event used mat. The NXT edition comes with one such “Relic”, featuring a piece of the ring mat from the fantastic NXT Takeover London event last year. There are a number of different cards one could receive in their package, featuring mat from different matches, which will surely make these highly collectable and sought after. Based on the value of pre-existing mat cards and the exclusivity of these ones in particular, I’m assigning an estimated value of £12.

Art prints are a common item to be included in collector’s editions, and there’s one in here. We have an art print of the work seen in the WWE YouTube series Canvas2Canvas featuring one Shinsuke Nakamura. Allegedly, Shinsuke has hand signed all 50,000 art prints over a period of time. At WWE live events, signed pictures of wrestlers are usually sold for around £15, and with this being an exclusive variant of these I’m going to assign the same value. The final and largest item in the NXT Edition is an 8 inch Demon Finn Balor statue. The statue itself is nice enough, but there;s not much to say about it. Similar figures and statues of that quality and size would probably sell for around £25, but statues in collectors editions rarely retain that value, so I’m putting an estimated value of £20 on the statue.

Totaling all of these values up gives us a grand total of £97. From a purely objective monetary angle, the NXT Edition seems like a good deal, but that’s all under the presumption that the buyer is actually interested in these items and would consider purchasing them separately. The causal WWE fan will likely have no real affinity for NXT, but the featured wrestlers will more likely than not become prevalent stars on the main roster in the upcoming months, especially Finn Balor and Shinsuke Nakamura, whom both have items in the NXT Edition centered around them. Unlike, say, a collector’s edition that just features items themed around the game itself, the NXT Edition caters towards fans of specific WWE Superstars, and seems rather successful in doing so. If you’re a fan of Balor, Nakamura, or even just want to own a unique piece of NXT memorabilia, the NXT Edition seems like a solid purchase. To answer the original question, yes, the NXT Edition is worth it based on both the quality of the items included and from a pure monetary standpoint. WWE 2K17 and the WWE 2K17 NXT Edition are set to release on the 11th of October 2016.