Ain't no 2K cavalry comin: Madden's monopoly is secure
By Brian Allen
Sports gamers speak of NFL 2K5 in hushed, reverent tones. As I opined recently, it was a gamechanger in many ways. But in calling for another answer, any other answer to Madden NFL, we view the current 2K through nostalgia-colored glasses.
Sadly, the heroic 2K that almost brought the Madden franchise to its knees has lived long enough to see itself become a villain just as nefarious as EA Sports. Its NBA 2K franchise has earned scorn from players, content creators, and mainstream media. The games are at this point largely indistinguishable from basketball-themed gambling machines.
Some of NBA 2K's most dedicated supporters have turned into its biggest detractors, and who could blame them. This past season, 2K dangled a Kobe Bryant collector reward that some players spent thousands of dollars trying to earn. For reasons it never explained, the company pulled the Bryant reward an hour before it was due to be unlocked.
I've covered video games for more than 20 years and that was one of the most disgusting displays of either greed, incompetence or both I have ever seen. If 2K was about to lose the rights to the card, they should have known that long before the deadline. If you screw up badly, the right thing to do is just admit it.
If 2K knew all along that people were spending their hard-earned cash for a reward they would never get, that's simply unconscionable. We may never know the real reason, but we know the outcome. Countless players washed their hands of the franchise they once loved, and they weren't wrong to do so.
Yes, NFL 2K5 was an incredible game. But that was 15 years ago. In much more recent memory, 2K gave us WWE 2K20, a game so buggy it nearly killed the franchise. 2K realized it needed a lot more time to cook the next mainline entry in the series. But rather than skip the year entirely, it rushed out WWE Battlegrounds, a half-baked arcade wrestler. Gotta keep the stockholders happy, huh?
There's far more of WWE 2K20 and NBA 2K24's DNA alive at Take-Two Interactive than there is of NFL 2K5s. Even if 2K Games wanted to save us from Madden's monopoly on pro football simulations, there's no guarantee they would remember how to do it.