Yeah but every NBA game gets flooded with negative reviews and these people will buy it again next year. It doesn’t matter how many negative reviews it has if it sells well.
I always have a laugh when half of these reviews are “wow guys this poorly rated game that everyone told me is garbage turned out to be garbage. They’re making the same game every year!”, fast forward to them posting the same review next year.
I got Madden 22 for free and for awhile I was enjoying it. It was my first Madden game since the 360. So I start going to forums for the game, and every single post was about how bad the game is, highlighting ridiculous bugs, shitty AI, missing features.
Then details about Madden 23 started to come out and everyone that was tearing 22 apart was absolutely in love with every little thing that was shown.
I stopped reading those forums. It was surreal.
Civilization series is notorious for that too. Civ -1 is always the best of the series and current Civ is the worst.
At least civ tries new things. But yeah the constant release of a new game with less features is pretty common.
Man I remember being on the Gamefaqs forums back in like 2005 or so, and people were complaining about this exact scenario back then. Some things never change
I know someone who routinely preorders games and constantly gets disappointed and never fails to preorder again.
Triple A games most of the time. You can probably guess which franchises.
I just miss the sport games of 10-20 years ago. They were just fun. Of course they weren’t perfect but we didn’t care. Now microtransactions have ruined everything…
Good sports games are still made, they just don’t have the offical roster… out of the box.
How are y’all buying this still jfc
Who else makes NBA games?
That’s why.
Is that really the only important aspect? That it has the NBA or Madden or FIFA brand? Does the actual game not matter at all? Because if so, I think sports gamers made their decision and have no right to complain about it’s results.
It’s the definitive basketball game and objectively does the job when it comes to that. It has its quirks for sure but the popularity speaks for itself. And given the choice, people would rather play as Lebron James as opposed to some random generated Jebron Lames; they want the real thing as seen on TV.
Now, 2K being dicks about having last-gen on PC after so many years. That’s definitely something to complain about and the reviews are deserved.
Wasn’t NBA 2K20’s trailer disliked to hell because it dedicated more time to show off the roulette wheel, pachinko and slots than basketball? That really doesn’t look like the definitive basketball game, dude. Multiplayer seems to work well enough but most of the complaints are over single player features, at least you can play a different game for that aspect.
I didn’t really encounter all that when I played and I stuck to the single player. But I don’t think that detracts from the core concept: 2K is THE basketball game when you ask most any fan or even NBA players. These guys are coming in for face scans and concerned for their in-game rating so yeah, popularity speaks for itself.
That said, the micro transaction stuff is terrible but it’s more of a thing that got slapped onto the game out of greed. I wouldn’t say it defines the game itself. Hence the complaints; mine included.
Blitz tried to make a football game without licensed players after Madden got the exclusive.
It flopped real fucking hard. Blitz The League, if you’re wondering.
Sports fans really want those actual rosters.
Blitz the League came out at a different time, Madden was still a beloved series by this point. You have two sports games, both are good, but one of them has the NFL license and the other doesn’t. I wouldn’t fault anyone for looking at Madden as a no brainer in such a situation.
Times have clearly changed, how many times did Angry Joe made videos ripping the Madden of the year into pieces? If the game is really that bad, giving up on the roster seems like a good compromise if it means a good game. But according to Madden players roster comes first, so I don’t know what they are complaining about.
I get that a good sports game that has the players you know and support isn’t much to ask but it’s what it is.
Can’t you just keep playing year old version? Like NBA22 or NBA21, skip a few years in between?
There’re definitely roster updates and other little stuff that gets added and tweaked in the new versions as much as people like to meme about “same game”. The old versions don’t update so that’s how they get new sales. Kinda bullshit but that’s what it is.
PC gets a special short straw though and is the last gen version of the game despite PC being on par or better than the new consoles. 2K knows where they make the money and do the least everywhere else. That part is definite bullshit.
certified toxic.
I think call of duty did that thing recently, where Modern Warfare 2019 got “deprecated” so peasants buy MW2. I am done with tit.
Yeah the lack of effort is just too brazen nowadays. Instead of making the new thing better they just make the old thing worse.
But as long as consoles keep selling, these companies won’t be stopping. Terrible
Sports games are one of the few genre where it might make sense as a gaas approach. Make 1 game for the console generation and sell roster updates every year. Add in micro transactions for the dumb stuff and it seem to be a win win all around. The game gets cheaper meaning more people will likely buy it. No one has to complain it’s the same game every year because it would be by design. And devs wouldn’t have to crunch every year to get the game out.
Totally agree. Shoot, even when I was still buying them I’d wait til they dropped to like $20 mid-season. It’s more of a DLC at that point which makes more sense considering what we get
Many people do. Yes, there are those that buy every year but I genuinely think they are the minority. You gotta think, even if only 1/3 of all the 2k NBA fans buy every three years, that’s… still a lot of sales.
No one said you have to buy basketball games
Never met a sports ball fan? This shit isn’t negotiable. Having working multiplayer (last years always get shut down) and up to date accurate rosters is crucial.
EA/2K got these people by the balls because there is no competition due to exclusivity. It’s really fucked up and sad for sports ball fans.
I’m a nba fan though, and I just stopped playing basketball games because I got tired of paying for roster updates. And now monetization is even worse so genre is dead to me. So as a former fan of 2k I don’t understand having to play the games so badly that people keep paying for it every year.
That applies to any game or franchise. If it gets bad enough that I detest it I’d just move on from it even if no option pops up. Especially one so predatory on top of being an annual release.
Oof, that’s a pretty low bar.
Stupid question: why call it 2K24 instead of 2024? It’s the same amount of characters…
The company is called 2K. Also, it is their “brand” since forever e.g. 2K5 for the 2005 one
also if you’ve ever asked a 2k player what game they play, they’ll often just say 2k without the year since it almost doesn’t matter
It also distinguishes them from EA’s sports titles. Or at least, it did, when they both made games for the same sports.
Someone in marketing thought that sounded cooler and would make more sales
