Why is NBA2K Performing so Poorly?

The NBA2K franchise has held a monopoly on the basketball video game industry for two decades. Recently, however, support has seriously dwindled. Today, we’ll cover the bad, the worse, and the…really bad. 

Over the past few game releases, NBA2K’s problems started to pile up. After the abysmal drop of NBA2K18, fans were skeptical about future products. NBA2K18 was full of bugs, inconveniences, and other gameplay quirks that nearly made it impossible to have fun on. Hence, the rise of Fortnite. Going into NBA2K19, the bar was too high. Fortunately, NBA2K delivered. NBA2K19 was a well-received game, loved by the majority of players. The same could be argued for NBA2K20. Although 20 and 19 were similar, I suppose that worked in the game’s favor.  

The problems really started with the release of NBA2K21 on the PS4. To be blunt, this game sucks. It feels as if they wrote all the good things about NBA2K20 on a whiteboard and titled it “things to remove.” The dribble mechanics in online modes are nearly impossible to work with, and you can’t be good at the game without spending money. The shooting meter was a downgrade from a previously successful model. There were only a select few “competitive” builds that one could select from. It felt like a rather bland game in comparison to its predecessors. 

However, one could argue that this was justifiably bad. With the upcoming release of Sony’s PS5, NBA2K had been open about the fact that their focus was on the PS5 version of the game instead of the PS4 one. While the current-gen NBA2K21 was lackluster, consumers clamored excitedly to wait for the updated game. Fast forward a couple of months, and you can probably guess where this goes. 

Next-gen NBA2K21 was arguably WORSE than its current-gen counterpart. Seeming as if the design team spent more time on the aesthetics than the game’s mechanics, the product has not made its previously expected splash thus far. Next-gen 2K21 is (simply put)…too easy and too hard in all the wrong ways. The dribbling is somehow worse than the current-gen (believe me, that’s a tall order), and every other aspect of the game can be compared to an RNG system. The shooting is way too easy, everyone can dunk on anyone, and each player can do virtually everything on the floor. 

These games aren’t doing as well as they should be, and content creators are speaking out. Multiple prominent internet figures in the community have continuously voiced their criticisms towards NBA2K, most of which seem to fall on deaf ears.

If NBA2K wants to keep their franchise from going under, they need to act fast. With most of their games being subpar, they’re going to need a memorable one to salvage their reputation.