 In the smoke screen that is the NBA 2K 21 launch, there's some action that's been going on behind the scenes right under our nose, ladies and gentlemen. And to me, it's the kind of stuff that excites me because it's the future of sports gaming and all that stuff is exciting to me. Like, next gen is coming out in a couple months. And the Xbox just released all their information. Now we're just waiting on Sony. What's the call, Sony? I don't know if you guys know this, but you know consoles sell at such a huge loss? And the only way that Sony and Microsoft ever make it back is from all the controllers you buy and all the games you buy and all the VC you buy, all of that. If you guys just bought a console and then never bought anything else, they would all go bankrupt tomorrow. So don't do that. I love gaming. Well, first things first, if y'all new to the channel you haven't already, I didn't have to say it no more. Be sure to subscribe. And there I go, being redundant. We're dropping videos daily and I might be streaming today if I have time. Raptors are playing, so you never know. If you don't get a video from me tomorrow, it's because I'm completely distraught over the fact that the Raptors are now out of the playoffs and we'll never see that same group of people ever play again because some of them are probably gonna leave because, I mean, they're being severely underpaid besides the point though. Okay, cool. Yo, the sports gaming space has been getting really, really competitive the last few years and I don't think people have been paying attention to it. And just a couple of weeks ago, there was news that one of the two, one of the most high profile 2K developers was poached and brought over to EA and nobody's talking about it. Okay, so this all began a few years ago. I don't know if you guys remember, but there was a game that came out called NBA Playgrounds. It was very underrated. It was kind of like just a very arcadey game. Keep in mind, the game dropped in an era where most publishers and executives didn't believe that arcade sports titles had a future because in the mid 2000s, early 2000s, games like NFL Street and NBA Street running rampant, pulling sales out the millions, everybody was playing them. But as those began to die in popularity, they just never saw a return. So NBA Playgrounds came out and I believe it also came out on the consoles eventually and it did well. It surprised a lot of people. It definitely caught the attention to NBA 2K because they didn't hesitate but to pick them up. Saber Interactive, the original publisher says, they didn't think we were quite ready for prime time. Saber CEO Matthew Karch says in a recent phone interview, characterizing 2K's initial impression of NBA Playgrounds from the first meeting, which in my opinion is crap. I just think 2K didn't believe there was somewhere for it to be in the market. So when NBA Playgrounds 2 was about to come out, 2K bought it and 2K published it under their own 2K Sports Umbrella as NBA 2K Playgrounds 2. That was the beginning and it was a beginning. If you guys remember in the early 2010s THQ, the company that used to publish all of the WWE games, they went out of business. They went bankrupt. And take two, obviously the company that owns 2K Sports quickly picked it up. Take two agrees to assume control of WWE video game and license from THQ, which is why we now see the WWE 2K franchise. But then things kind of went quiet for a few years because 2K is already big in the basketball space and it's not a huge jump for them to get into WWE, especially if the big player that was originally doing WWE is now out of the game. But this year out of nowhere, because think about it, at the beginning of the console generation in 2014, there was a lot of excitement around take two and NBA 2K because if you look into the earnings reports, they were so excited about the prospect of microtransactions. And we know for a fact as people who play the game, they ran that shit to the ground. I think they're starting to realize that they might have reached the capacity at which they can go before people just absolutely revolt and refuse to play the game. So they're sitting there in these executive boardrooms saying like, how are we gonna make money if we can't just do more microtransactions? That's dead ass what they're thinking. And they must have come up with some kind of conclusion this year because there's a flurry of acquisitions take two main and it starts like this. Out of nowhere, because everyone didn't assume it was possible because EA kind of had the monopoly on the whole football market. 2K is like, hold on now, we wanna jump into the mix. NFL 2K signs partnership with the NFL Players Association in the Madden monopoly is over question mark. And something that I didn't know and I assume a lot of you guys didn't know is EA didn't have the exclusive right to make all NFL games. They just had the exclusive right to make simulation NFL games. So 2K is like, hey, we kind of did it with NBA 2K playgrounds. Why don't we just come over here and make an arcade version of the simulation stuff that you do. We don't exactly know any more additional information about this except the acquisition. We don't know when it releases. We assume it's gonna come out on next gen but that's it for now. But it wasn't like a few weeks later where they made another acquisition and this time they picked up a golf game. I forgot what the original game was called. Hold on. Ah, yeah, it was this one right here. The golf club 2019. And they rebranded it and now 2K is publishing it under their wing as PGA 2K21. It looks like they're trying to do this with every imaginable sport. And I'm not exaggerating what I tell you, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw F1 2K21. NHL 2K21, hmm? Because what 2K is doing, they're not like building entire dev teams. The dev teams already exist. They're just buying the rights to the game so they can publish it with the same dev team. But it doesn't even stop there because there was an announcement a couple months ago that they were also looking to get into arcade WWE games. WWE 2K Playgrounds leads the charge into the future of 2K's WWE gaming experience. And they dropped this trailer. I don't know if you guys remember this, but it seems like a fairly interesting process, right? Because in and of itself, the idea of wrestling, especially in the WWE is incredibly animated and over the top. And so I feel like it fits the theme of this highly arcade, stubby, bobblehead character looking ass. This looks like it could be fun. So then you sit back and you're like, okay, 2K is doing all it is, what's going on? Well, if you look further away, you might see Ubisoft is doing the same with board games, right? Ubisoft now has a Monopoly game. Ubisoft also has a Uno game. But then you're like, okay, agent, how about EA? Why is EA just sitting there allowing all of this stuff to happen? It's as if they're making zero moves. And I'm not gonna lie to you, the last five to six years of EA should scare anybody that plays EA games. Because although they're huge in FIFA and they probably always will be, actually, that's a lie, anything can happen. I sorta got it, man. Nobody thought that NBA Live was gonna be dethroned by 2K 12 years ago. Nobody thought it. All right, that's a cat. 14 years ago, nobody thought it. But then literally days before the launch of NBA 2K 21, for the first time in years, I finally heard something that had me slightly excited about an EA product. Scott O'Gallagher leaving the NBA 2K series for creative director role at EA Sports, joining ex-NBA 2K producer, Rob Jones. So no exaggeration, EA poached Scott O'Gallagher, who by the way is such an integral part of NBA 2K that when you hop into the practice arena the last couple years at NBA 2K, you'll see his face. So you might recognize Scott. And he announced it on Twitter by uploading this not-so-cryptic video. Oh, so let me just sing the song because I don't wanna catch copyright, but it says, I'm coming home. I'm coming home. Tell the world that I'm coming. And you see flashes at EA Sports. It's not so cryptic, he's going to EA Sports. And it's safe to assume that he's going to go to NBA Live. It'd be kind of odd if he just made a jump to Madden, although that's possible. Okay, so the problem with NBA Live though, for some of you guys that's new into the space, you might have no cool NBA Live as you know. Why are you talking about this random game that stands no chance? No, no, no, NBA Live used to dominate the space 12 years ago, swear to God. To the point where 2K was the little brother that would just get bullied. And it wasn't even, I'm telling you, it wasn't close. NBA Live 06, nobody was thinking about it. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, guys, I'm starting to forget what this language is here on these videos. I don't know what it is about me. Hey, I want you to read this. Read it out to me real quick. I'm not gonna read the alphabet. No, no, read it out to me. No. Cause you seem like you're struggling a little bit, so I, I, I just a little bit. Just like a couple of them. Just like one, just the first three. First three, first three, first three. ABC. You're learning. Between the years of like 96 and 2007, NBA Live had a stronghold on the entire basketball simulation game. But they got lazy. They got very lazy. And they let 2K catch up in ways like it's so pathetic they allowed it to happen. In NBA 2K4, they had a mode where you can like travel to different parts of the world and play different people. It almost felt like the beginning of my career. And I remember EA had something similar with NBA Street, but they didn't extrapolate that to their simulation department at NBA Live for some reason. Man, what a mistake that was because it was my career. My career was the thing that stole everyone away from NBA Live. So NBA Live 10 was the final NBA Live game that released for four years. And if you guys remember, they took that long break. They didn't tell us it was gonna be four years. We initially only thought it was gonna be year. And then two, and then three. And then it was never gonna come back before they announced it for next gen. What's happening right now? They didn't release at NBA Live last year. And next gen is about to come out. And so a pickup like Scott O'Gallagher who's had a ton of experience in the industry is big. The only problem I see with this, bro, is I don't think EA cares enough to stand a chance. EA is trying to do the bare minimum to get people excited about their game and looking away from 2K. But y'all need to invest more in every department. The sports titles like NBA 2K profit to such a degree makes no sense. Cause it doesn't take that much to drop another 2K. Which is why I keep saying hire more devs, but that would increase the investment required. And what they'll do is they'll take the money that they made on NBA 2K and other games that's very profitable like GTA V. And they'll spend it on just acquiring companies like this. This is what they spend the money on in case you're wondering. They invest some of it and then they spend the rest of it just acquiring companies like this, guys. Look, all these companies acquired. Where do you think they got the money? 2K. So EA, what's so hard? Why can't you just do that with your NBA franchise? What's going on? Why is your dev team so fucking timey? Now keep in mind, I don't know all the intricate details. I just know what I've heard from time to time. But man, it's like, yo, y'all just been muffling opportunity after opportunity. Y'all ran the NBA Live name into the ground. If you remember correctly, they even tried to rebrand to NBA Elite. And that was a horrible launch. They went right back to NBA Live. Stop embarrassing yourselves, EA. You got Scott on the team now. And Scott, he's one of these now. Don't embarrass Scott with a bad product. Cause I'm telling you right now, if this NBA Live drops on next gen and it's Cheeks, everyone's gonna be like, oh man, Scott on Galaga, he just makes Cheeks games. So it's like you, you wanna avoid that association at all costs. And I'm hoping that's the case. Next gen, we don't know what's gonna be possible. We don't know how friendly it's gonna be. And when it comes to creating games, how easy it's gonna be to port, how optimized games can be, the improvements to the servers, the delay. We don't know yet, guys. We don't know. We haven't played them yet. But this kind of stuff gets me personally excited. EA fight back, what y'all waiting for, man? Fight back. 2K is about to smoke y'all, man. And y'all just sitting there taking punches from Mike Tyson. How are you gonna survive? FIFA, maybe? They're gonna come for that, too. Just wait for it. 2K is gonna come for FIFA. They're gonna buy PES or something. And they're gonna make it marginally better and spam microtransactions. And people gonna buy it. That's how the shit works. I remember NBA 2K14 came out. That was the first game that came out on the next generation. NBA Live was making their return. Everybody was so excited because EA was talking about their new Ignite engine that all the sports titles was using. Even me personally, I was excited. I saw the EA playthrough and I was like, I mean, the E3 playthrough. And I was so utterly excited for that game right there, fellas. And 2K, they, man, once they murked the year and made sure that NBA Live was literally in their dust, they were bragging all in their financial report, guys. The entire thing. Because Take 2 is a publicly traded company. So they have to release their earnings reports. We see how much NBA 2K sold and all their products sold. They want to brag to the public so that you buy shares of the company. So then I got bored one day and I literally just searched up their 2014 financial report and there's 24 instances of them going, look at us, guys, still killing the game. What is EA? We don't even know what those guys are. In this part here, they say, delivered the highest rated and top selling basketball video game for the 13th consecutive year with NBA 2K 14. This title was the first for our next gen and has surpassed 2K 13 as our highest selling sports release with selling of more than 6.5 million units to date. So 6.5 million, you don't have context. You don't know how great that is, right? So let me give you context. NBA Live 14 sold around 500,000. And that was the numbers I had like a couple of years ago and the website I used to get those numbers isn't active anymore. So I can't bring them up, which is sad. But I remember it because I've set it in videos in the past. And it gets even funnier because I would argue the only reason NBA Live even got to 500,000 is if you remember correctly, NBA Live sold as a package deal to some people with a PS4. So when people were desperate to get PS4s and they would take any bundle, anything, it was selling out regardless of what game came with it. One of the games that came with it was NBA Live 14. You know how I know that? My brother made that mistake and we had that garbage poor excuse of a game in our household. And yes guys, I invited friends over and we played it day and night because it was so, you know when something is so bad you just have a time of your life playing it. You know what I'm talking about. That was NBA Live 14 for us guys. But then you think like six years later that NBA Live's made some kind of progress? Nope. In fact, they've went in the opposite direction. They've proved to everybody that NBA Live is in the past. So I'm hoping that with some of these changes here they stand a chance now. Is it likely? No, no, 2K is very likely to come out and knock it out the park with next gen at least relative to EA Sports and NBA Live. But should you be a little bit excited? Of course, of course. Guys, this is the stuff that I get really excited about. Beyond like 2K, I do gaming stuff. And I'm uploading some of those to my second channel by the way, which is why I keep telling y'all link in the description, click subscribe to that. I'm a gamer, I just wanna see like good games. And when EA fights back, we're gonna get better games from 2K. You get that? EA, you might have lost this entire console generation. You might have done that. And I know that's a hard accomplishment to do but you guys did it. You tried really hard and you got beat the up all six years. But yo, here is your chance to come back. Don't mess it up. The fact that people could be so frustrated with 2K and people still don't wanna play your game should tell you a lot about how much you need before you could catch up. And if there's ever an opportunity to catch up, it's gonna happen in a console jump year because there's a lot more like itty bitty details you have to get over. And it's like, man, what works, what doesn't work? You have a chance right now, guys. That's all I'm saying, man. Hey, it's agent, man. Right here, creative director. Scott, don't take my job now. Hey. Yo, y'all need to the channel, man. Be sure to subscribe. Rap just played today based on how that goes. I'm either gonna be miserable or ecstatic, you feel me? And podcast link in the description because I'm most likely gonna have my reaction on there. I'm gonna catch you guys in the next one, man. Deuce. No, no, not deuce later because I don't end videos with deuce.