No, because there are plenty of other places to get coffee. The only competing franchise, NBA Live, stopped being made years ago. The irony is that NBA licensing isn’t exclusive, so feasibly another studio could come in to create competition, but it won’t happen.
From the outside its easy to say vote with your wallet, but I imagine a lot of foss nerds aren’t into sports, so actual sports fans get stuck between choosing shit or shittier.
Unlike American football and baseball, NBA does not have an exclusivity deal with 2K, last I heard. It’s just that their competitors always made worse games, and 2K was all that survived. There isn’t even an off-brand basketball game to turn to without the NBA license. If you want video game basketball, this is basically all there is.
So I actually used to work on NBA2K. NBA Live used to be considered the superior game. One year, they missed their deadline and had to delay the game. This caused all the basketball fans to buy NBA2K. They all decided it was better and NBA Live never regained their lead, which lead us to today. Visual Concepts is now very adamant about never delaying the game, which is why there is a yearly crunch, devs get paid overtime, and they avoid feature creep aggressively.
Yeah, mine was more an abbreviated history. If memory serves, that one delayed NBA Live was actually cancelled after review copies went out, which only a handful of games have ever done. As I remember the likes of Jeff Gerstmann telling it, that was the exact inflection point. Though I’ll admit I haven’t purchased a basketball game since the N64.
It’s probably because there is no other nba simulation available…
Somebody needs to bring back NBA Jam.
BOOMSHAKALAKA!
Isn’t that just like saying there’s no other company selling Starbucks® coffee?
Like yeah that’s the point
No, because there are plenty of other places to get coffee. The only competing franchise, NBA Live, stopped being made years ago. The irony is that NBA licensing isn’t exclusive, so feasibly another studio could come in to create competition, but it won’t happen.
Damn I didn’t realise that, that is shitty.
From the outside its easy to say vote with your wallet, but I imagine a lot of foss nerds aren’t into sports, so actual sports fans get stuck between choosing shit or shittier.
Unlike American football and baseball, NBA does not have an exclusivity deal with 2K, last I heard. It’s just that their competitors always made worse games, and 2K was all that survived. There isn’t even an off-brand basketball game to turn to without the NBA license. If you want video game basketball, this is basically all there is.
So I actually used to work on NBA2K. NBA Live used to be considered the superior game. One year, they missed their deadline and had to delay the game. This caused all the basketball fans to buy NBA2K. They all decided it was better and NBA Live never regained their lead, which lead us to today. Visual Concepts is now very adamant about never delaying the game, which is why there is a yearly crunch, devs get paid overtime, and they avoid feature creep aggressively.
Yeah, mine was more an abbreviated history. If memory serves, that one delayed NBA Live was actually cancelled after review copies went out, which only a handful of games have ever done. As I remember the likes of Jeff Gerstmann telling it, that was the exact inflection point. Though I’ll admit I haven’t purchased a basketball game since the N64.
Damn that is shitty.
I imagine the genre is extra starved for projects, as a lot of the nerds that would typically recreate it aren’t into sports.