 There's a reason no developer or publisher has the balls to challenge NBA 2K. For reasons we're about to explain here in this video, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel. Hey, if you're new to the channel, oh, you mean you need to subscribe to the channel. Do that, tuh. Well, NBA 2K is a scary foe. It's like fighting Mike Tyson. You might be able to win. Just think about the way that 2K designs their games on holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas break. They always do something festive. They want NBA 2K to be a part of people's daily rituals, weekly rituals, and holiday rituals. That's how they build customer loyalty. You can keep buying the game, and when you return for whatever cool event is going on, you're spending money on the game. Microtransactions, clothing, upgrades, boosts, Gatorades, all of that. After 12 years straight of it just having just a straight runway with very little next to no competition, they have it down packed. And you hear it all the time, right? If NBA 2K had more competition, it'd be better. But yeah, it's true. There's also a reason why it doesn't have that competition. What does that sound like? A huge thank you to today's sponsor, Gen.G. Mobile One and Gen.G is giving you one more chance to tune up your game, fellas. Man, there's a link in the description. You can join a tune up sweepstakes man, have a chance at some good prizes. The grand prize, a PS5, but they also give out all kinds of VC. And they're having one last final community tournament, man. So if you're a competitive guy, take a look at the prizes. Come on, bro. What are you doing? Please, enter. So there's a chance to win money, VC, and a PlayStation 5. All you gotta do is click the top link in the description. If you'd like to play NBA 2K, this is a no-brainer. And it's a huge thank you to Mobile One and Gen.G for helping sponsor this video. Alright, let's address the elephant in the room. It's hard to make video games nowadays. Video games are a hella complex, bro. It's kind of like playing in the NBA in the 1950s compared to playing now. It's a lot of try-hards nowadays. Not just that, the price of these games has fucking skyrocketed. I mean, underneath NBA 2K's umbrella is a fellow game with a huge budget, GTA V. Although 2K never releases the budget for how much they spend on their annual releases because they'd probably be eating a lie for that. Because they probably make, bro, they probably make it hella cheap. Let's be honest. And then they make hella profits. Let's be honest. And then they use those profits to build new IPs and spend them on other games or other businesses or hiring other people for other things instead of reinvesting into fucking business. But look, man, under the same umbrella, GTA V is the biggest budgeted game in gaming history. At a obnoxiously high, 265 million, they made it back like that. Day one, because in the first day, they made a billion dollars off that game. Hey, GTA V has to be the most profitable video game in video games history. I don't think any game for the next couple decades will ever beat it. It is an incredible run they're having. They sold the game on the PS3, the PS4, and the PS5. They sold hella games on PC because of all the RP stuff that's been going on the past few years. And they just keep reselling and remastering. They released the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy remastered like six months ago. The reason I'm bringing this up is because they're under the same umbrella. Take two. But it's hard to make video games nowadays. You need really good developers and a very good budget to come up with anything that people might want to tolerate. Unless you're like an indie game, you have your work cut out for you, man. While it is true that there's plenty of new technology coming out that makes it easier for people to develop games, kind of like driving an automatic car is easier than driving a manual. The games are also just so much more complex. I feel like the ceiling is so high that there's no limit to what can happen. It really just takes time and money. So that's a good place to start. A lot of people can't afford to fight against NBA 2K. Game makes billions and billions of dollars. Like, what could you even do? And even if you were able to miraculously pull something off, the likelihood that 2K wouldn't just purchase your game and or just outfund you is low. And we've seen that happen. If you guys remember, there was a game that came out called NBA Playgrounds on the PC sometime like 2016. The game performed really well. They sold hundreds of thousands of copies. And for an indie game, a lot of people were surprised. But by the time the game was about to come out with NBA Playgrounds 2, NBA 2K bought them. And now they're called NBA 2K Playgrounds 2. There's no room for competition when they could afford to buy everybody out. And that's a hella lucrative offer, man. You started this IP. All you dropped was one game on Steam. You made your millions of dollars. And now 2K is willing to buy you for more millions of dollars. Come on, man. Who's not going to take that? That brings me to the next point is the games are getting consolidated. We've seen it happen with THQ. They used to be the publisher of the WWE series. But when THQ went under, somebody needed to buy the IP. I mean, it wasn't like it was going to be zero WWE games for the rest of time. Guess who bought it? 2K. That's why it's called WWE 2K. So it's just the bigger guy is just eating the smaller guy. And while there's some benefits to that, for the most part, it makes the bigger guy too large to lose. And 2K did the same thing with their golf game, PGA, whatever the fuck golf NBA 2K 22. Whatever they call it. I'm not sure. So 2K is just eating up all their best competition. But then you might be asking agent, what if it's another large publisher or developer? You can't buy EA. You can't buy Activision. Actually, that's bad because Activision just got bought for like fucking billions. But the bigger and the larger the players are, the more difficult it will be to compete against them. Unless 2K is just willing to concede parts of the market, which it doesn't seem like they are, even if Activision wanted to bring back a street hoops like game. Because I don't know if you guys remember, Activision has basketball games in their lineup. This is the old ones. This is the first one they came out with right here. I don't even know what I'm looking at, to be honest with you. But it was their attempt at just trying some shit that might potentially work. A few decades and a lot of pixels later, they came out with this game right here, Street Hoops. I think this is like a pretty hated game. I'm not gonna lie. I played it a few times. I enjoyed it. What can I say? It was in the early 2000s and it's Street Hoops. I mean, it was hot at the time. This is Activision though. They just gave up on the genre, instead focusing on the games that were making them a lot of money, like at the time called Duty. But why though? Why would Activision stop if they had something that people might have liked? It's very high risk. It's super duper high risk. Like movies and games are very high risk. Because at any point your game could just like you run out of money. Let's start there. You can run out of money to afford to even continue playing. Because you need people and things and technology. It costs money. The level of competition with games like NBA 2K is rocket high. The customer loyalty is pretty high with NBA 2K. Y'all hate the game. And then you buy it the next year. That's literally what loyalty is. That'd be like if I dropped a string of 12 videos that nobody liked and people kept viewing them. That's what it's like. Why would I make a good video? Hmm, you're buying them anyway. And then probably most importantly, 2K has had a long time to get this right. I can't think of too many devs or publishers off the dome that might be into sports games are willing to dedicate years and years of time to get a game right. This 2K has been going on for what now? 22, 23 years? How are you going to catch up? 22, 23 years of feedback improvement every single year? Come on dog. That's why EA has been coming out with NBA Live 14 and 15, but then no 16 and no 17. And there's reasons they fucking skip years because they're trying to play catch up. This is like one large game of catch up. But when you're playing catch up, you don't even have time to actually innovate. And that's really was holding a lot of people back, man. Yeah, bro, it made me mad proud when I saw Epic Games blow up with Fortnite. Now Epic Games was already really relevant. They have a bunch of awesome engines that people make video games on and they had a lot of popular games. But Fortnite, but that was a different tier and they immediately started staffing and scaling their business. This is not easy stuff to do. And now they're getting like hundreds of millions, billions of dollars worth of investment from players like Sony. But on top of that, they're making billions on billions on billions on billions off their biggest IPs. And on top of that, I don't know if y'all heard they recently just dropped Unreal Engine 5 and game after game developers coming out with like, yo, we're using Unreal Engine 5 because they just make good products. And then on a polar opposite of that right there is a game like Among Us who even though had a great opportunity to scale their game instead decided to pocket that revenue, that extra additional profits and revenue and not build something that can stand the test of time. Everybody's ambitions are different, but to go up against a Goliath like NBA 2K, you don't do that by playing it safe. You have to play it large. And that's just, that's a stacked list, bro. There's not too many people that fit that criteria. So let's talk about it. NBA 2K's biggest competition has historically been NBA Live. Up until like 2007, 2008, NBA Live had the better of them for almost an entire decade. Who would have thought, bro? It just feels like forever ago that NBA Live was even a relevant video game. And their attempts to bring the game back have just fell short, man. Brand has gone to shit. Nobody even thinks NBA Live and it's followed up with like, yo, that game used to be fire. NBA Live is a fucking joke. And I have very little to no faith because I've been burned so many times that they'll ever come out with something that could actually rival NBA 2K. But the rumors say is they're working on a basketball game whether it's NCAA, a simulation basketball game, or an arcade basketball game, I have no fucking clue. So even though the optimistic side of me wants to be excited about whatever they're working on, why get my hopes up? And it's so odd. Isn't it so odd that the genre so large can be just dominated by one individual? But then let's ignore everything that was just said for a moment and focus on probably the most important part. If you take a look at this here bar graph, it is very clear that the majority of revenue, not profit, revenue is made from mobile games. So even though in my head, because I play on console and PC, those are the games that get the most of my attention. It's the mobile games that's getting the majority of the revenue here. And if you take a look at NBA 2K's earning reports that they have to drop every quarter, and it shows the same exact thing as serious growth, and they know this, which is why they literally came out with their take two mobile games department. While all the games might not be the most popular and they might not have the funding and or the support that NBA 2K does, I believe that it's only a matter of time before somebody knocks 2K out. I just don't believe it'll be EA this time. Hey, if y'all enjoyed the video, make sure to drop a like. Look, man, I'm upset. 2K keep trying to make the game more realistic, and there's a very good reason why they shouldn't do it. Click that video right there where I talk about that information. Otherwise, I catch y'all in the next one, man. Peace.