 A new fall has appeared in the sports gaming world and another has fallen flat on his face, is getting juicy, fellas. And there's a lot that can be learned because if there's one thing that I keep hearing in my experience here in the NBA 2K community, it's that 2K needs some more competition. Okay, so let's see what can be learned from the failures, successes, and future attempts in a similar industry. First things first! Bro, stop, stop, stop. You're watching this video and you haven't subscribed. It's offensive. Just do that real quick. It's not really offensive, but it's offensive though. All right, so I was on Twitter. I saw this VR gaming headline that went like this. FIFA is ending its long-standing exclusive partnership with EA Sports, a statement reads. FIFA is bullish and excited about the future in gaming and e-sports for fo-, oh yeah. And it is clear that this needs to be a space that is occupied by more than one controlling all party. So you might be wondering, why does FIFA think that? What information do they have that leads us to believe that it needs to be opened up to everybody? Who is everybody? Is there any new competitors? So I need you all to, while I talk, kind of draw comparisons, right? On one side, there's NBA 2K's dominance in the sports basketball market. And then right underneath it is the little itty bitty brother NBA Live, and they keep trying, and lower do they keep trying, but they lose every time they lose. And then in the soccer market, there's FIFA at the tippity tippity top, and then there's Pez, which is their little brother. But obviously, if Bleacher Reports gaming is dropping photos of broken hearts, smack dab in the middle of October, something must be going on, and you'd be correct. It's a huge thank you to MPL for sponsoring this video. MPL is a fun platformer, has all your favorite games in one place, ladies and gentlemen. On the app, they have plenty of fun games like Solitaire, Bingo, 8-Ball, Blast. No one I've been playing the most, obviously, is Hoops. Could you tell, huh? The best part about these games specifically is that you can play them and actually earn cash as you play. All right, so this one here is called Hoops. This is the one that I've been playing the most. You can battle for free, you can put up money if you want to. So the game is simple enough, there's a basketball, you tap it, you pull, and you shoot the basketball. Now you're playing up against people, so there's some pressure because you can decide to play with money on the line or play for free depending on what your wallet's looking like, and there's different power-ups that you get that make your ability to shoot the basketball significantly easier or harder. So again, you could play for free, or you could decide to put up money and play up against other people and actually win money. The app makes it super easy for you to withdraw the money that you win through your PayPal or even your bank account. So click the link at the top of the description, you can download MPL on the app store, you can also download it through the website for Android users at npl.us. So you can start playing your favorite games while earning money at the same time. And if you sign up right right now, you get an extra $5 bonus for doing so. But you can win up to 50K daily playing and competing on MPL. And if there wasn't enough ways to make money if you refer a friend, you get up to $20. Again, a huge thank you to MPL for sponsoring this video. So what is it, Agent, what's going on? Well, it can't be e-football. Pez actually did a lot different. I talked about it in a previous video months back, but not only did they drop the game free to play, they gave everybody a big roadmap on when they could expect different pieces of content from the game to drop. And they were taking serious aim at FIFA. FIFA has been dominating that market for as long as people can remember. And just like in the 2K community, people are not happy about it. So Pez being backed by big, large Japanese publisher, Konami, has some real firepower. So it's incredibly disappointing to see that they fell flat on their face at launch. And I mean, flat on their face. There isn't many enjoying playing the game. A lot of people are citing visual bugs, sluggish gameplay, and God awful AI as the reasons why. I mean, just take a close look. You could draw comparisons immediately to games that failed in the basketball market, like NBA Live 14 or NBA Elite 11. Who remembers that one? So I love the game as being toted as like a beta in that the content is coming, guys. Look at the roadmap. At launch, there wasn't nearly enough depth and the gameplay wasn't nearly enticing enough to keep people playing. If I know I have a couple of friends that play the game and they tell me it's awful, I'm not gonna give it a chance now. So being just free to play isn't enough. And Pez, or should I say e-football, learned that the hard way. A rebrand, large promises, and a roadmap of future larger promises just didn't do the trick. And you might be thinking, agent, that's one man's opinion. That's not everybody's opinion. No, it's everybody's opinion, bro. Everybody believes this. To the point where e-football then got on Twitter and apologized for the mess that their game dropped in. They said, thank you very much for playing e-football 2022. We would like to inform all users that we have decided to delay the release of our version 0.9.1 to early November. We sincerely apologize for the delay and the inconvenience caused. Our hope is that the additional time taken will allow us to ensure the experience is improved for all of our users. The likelihood that these will be nagging issues for the better part of a year is high. And this is coming from Konami, well-established developer and publisher in the gaming space. Why would FIFA feel bullish? What reason would they have to feel bullish if the only competition in the market just proved that they're not much competition at all? Well, that's actually where a third party jumps into the mix. This third party's game is named UFL and is taking a similarly ambitious free-to-play approach that Pez did. Branded as being fair to play, UFL already seems to be countering EA's approach. If UFL can create a space where new players feel like they have the chance to properly compete without worrying about getting absolutely trounced by a mega team when they're just looking for a fun game, then they will likely be able to build up a decent-sized audience. Of course, it's not the first time that a dev team that no one's heard of has jumped into the mix and made bold claims. So what makes this different than Pez or different than really any competition facing the sports gaming world? Why to the point where FIFA would change their whole licensing strategy based on their belief in that same ambition? Well, similarly, the game is free-to-play. But on top of that, they started development in 2016. The company's called Strikers Inc. With it being the studio's first project, it's definitely a bold move. And so there's your answer. This game that's been being developed for over five years now has the backing and support of FIFA. And just to provide a little bit more context, it's actually part of the reason why Pez or E-Football struggled. Because for a long time, they couldn't get the licenses that FIFA could. Can you imagine playing a basketball game that's supposed to be a simulation experience? But instead of Kobe Bryant on your team, is a guy named Bobby Ryan. And Bobby Ryan has the number 24 on looks a little bit like Kobe Bryant and plays exactly like Kobe, how Kobe Bryant would play. That's kind of what the Pez experience has been like because they haven't had the rights to actually use the players in a lot of these teams and leagues around the world. So that's a huge drawback. That on top of the fact that they don't have nearly as big a team and they're not nearly as profitable as FIFA is. FIFA just had to leg up. And they stayed with the leg up like NBA 2K expanding on their lead year over year. And like in the basketball gaming world, people are desperate to just try something new and different, a fresh take on an already existent and probably dormant industry. Like man, we've been repeating the same game modes, the same experience and the same builds over and over and over again. It's time for something new. Now you could come in here and talk about the something new but actually being able to deliver is a whole new conversation. I mean, just to provide some context, e-football was rated without any exaggeration the worst game in steam history. And to provide you with even more context, NBA 2K18, the game that we all hate with the passion is number 13 on the list. So somehow e-football is 13 times worse than the worst basketball game in NBA 2K history. Is there also a basketball game that's been trying to make a return for the last what decade plus? A game that canceled in 2020, 2021. And if they drop in 2022, it'll be three years of development, one that for the past decade has been trying to make any and all attempt to gain market share off of 2K. Yes guys, that would be NBA Live. Well, the number one way you can get people in the doors by dropping the game free to play the other guys had that right. When you spend the better part of the last 12 years deteriorating any and all goodwill you've built with your fan base. Yeah, you gotta win it back somehow and free to play is the way you can do it. I mean, games like Fortnite won people over off what guys? Free to play, good gameplay, depth and a good roadmap. Because at that time, do we remember? PUBG was dominating the market. Nobody thought PUBG was gonna get taken down. Feels like so long ago now, like things happen and in hindsight, it all makes sense. But in the moment, everybody acts confused. On top of that, it's good to have a roadmap. You could even call the game a beta for all I give a but on top of that, you have to have some level of depth. There should be something bringing me back to continue to play the game over and over and over and over again. And where I feel like has messed up and hopefully NBA Live doesn't make the same mistake is by trying to be everything. NBA 2K can do that because it's the big dog in the space, guys. They can like drop a game and you can hop on ProM and get a more simulation experience then you can hop on the park and get a more casual experience. The reality is by trying to do both they don't end up doing any one of those really, really well. But maybe they do both of those decent and that's good enough because the competitors suck. But NBA Live, I think it'd be way more challenging for y'all to attack simulation, way more challenging. I wouldn't even attempt to try to make a better simulation game than NBA 2K. They just have so many years of dropping annual releases and fixing this and tuning that. They're ahead of y'all when it comes to the next generation technology right now. I think you attack the casual and I don't mean like super arcadey like NBA playgrounds. I mean like the park experience. The one that's like, yeah it's fast paced gameplay and it should look like real life but you're optimizing for fun rather than for simulation. It's the difference between need for speed and Forza Horizon. Between escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty. But agent, what leads you to believe that NBA Live is even working on a game? Do we have that information? Yes guys, we do have that information. There was an article that dropped earlier this year saying NBA Live remains dormant but EA is working on basketball games for next generation consoles. No clarification on whether that's like an NBA Playgrounds competitor, NBA 2K competitor but there is a few things that we do know. Well for one, the EA Sports General Manager said we've got some next generation high definition basketball projects that we've been talking about and designing and working on. And we also know that last year Scott O'Gallagher lead deaf guy for NBA 2K packed it up and went to EA Sports. Whether or not he's working on the NCAA football, some kind of like NBA Street Revive and NBA Live Revive, we don't know. But knowing that another basketball game is out in the horizon is not gonna make NBA 2K sweat a bullet. And that's because if we look to our friends over there in the soccer department, yes soccer guys, FIFA's not sweating no bullets. They just saw a pest fall flat on their face and we have no evidence that this brand new deaf team working on this brand new first of a kind project will even be able to pull it off. The benefit of a Konami or EA Sports is that they have big budgets because they can afford to. They can take those risks because other areas of their business are very profitable. Strikers, we don't know. So let me know, I guess in the comments what basketball game you would like to see compete with 2K. Would you like an NBA Street type competitor? Would you like an NBA Live Revive? Maybe one that's more arcade-y or simulation? Drop a comment, let me know. Drop a like, drop a like, drop one. Right now, I'm waiting. Please, there's a video right here. Catch this one. If you like this video, you can like that video. But if you do none of those things, I at least appreciate that you watched all the way through. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.