 The process of designing video games has slowly become designer information that only a few have access to and those few like to keep it private. But one thing I hear all the time on the internet is dropping developers from the next-gen version of the game to work on a current-gen or mobile or any other project will come at the cost of the next-gen version. And theoretically that makes sense. You pull something away from here that could be working on that thing shouldn't it come at the cost of? Y'all new to the channel? Well, welcome to this little nookie of the internet. I'm glad you found your way here. You want to stay here, subscribe to the channel, turn on the post notifications. You don't have to, but it would be nice you'll be notified the next time I drop a video. Now you can't have a conversation like this without first starting off with the sales of the game. NBA 2K is purely driven off of their ability to make money. If they found out tomorrow that there's no money being made in the basketball market, they would leave. As much as that drives me to be more cynical about the gaming industry, I also realize that there's fantastic publishers like THQ and great dev teams like Telltale Games that have went under in recent years because of their inability to make money. So 2K gotta make money somehow. Each year with 1.6 million for 2K5, 2 million with 2K9, 7 million with 2K15, reaching a career peak of 14 million copies in NBA 2K20, 2K has been selling more and more every single year. And they will do whatever it takes to sell more and more copies of the game. And they will do even more to get you to buy more once you buy the game in the form of microtransactions. That's how they make their money. If you've ever read any of Take 2's financial reports, you'll sit there and be baffled on how much they like to flex on the recurring spending or microtransactions that people spend in their games. Okay, so let's backtrack a little bit before we talk about 2K21 being the next gen version of the game. Because to learn about 2K21, we have to go back to the last generation jump, and that was from 2K13 on the PS3 to 2K14 on both the PS3 and the PS4. 2K is one of those games where like 3, 4, sometimes 5 years after a next generation is out, they're still dropping current gen versions, last gen versions. I believe there was a 2K16 on the PS3, was there not? Yes, there was. Was there 2K17? I think there was. There was! And any of you who have played the current gen versions of the game deep into the next cycle of the next generation consoles can tell you that they did not even try. Millions of people still decided to buy. And usually old generation versions of the game is like, mom's just walking to a game stop and they want to buy 2K for their kids and they buy the cheap one and it ends up being this one here. So NBA 2K13 sold 4 million copies and 2K14 across all platforms almost doubled it, selling 7 million copies. Now that right there is impressive and that is an indication of 2K that they need to double and triple down on next generation and leave the current or now last gen in the past. And that's an interesting note because the same thing didn't happen with this next generation here with NBA 2K20 selling a career 14 million copies across all platforms and NBA 2K21 only selling 8 million. Now 2K split. So it kind of becomes difficult to double triple down on something when 2K doesn't know if the fans even want it. And you can look at evidence of that here on YouTube where current gen versions of the game are getting more views than next gen versions of the game. Who would have thought? Alright so I did a lot of research so I knew what I was talking about here in this video, check this out. It was announced like a month or two ago that NBA 2K has a new dev team, a bunch of new guys. And I got gasped, my dick got hard because I heard there was new developers. I've been asking for 2K to hire new developers for a very long time. Turns out those developers have worked on NBA 2K in the past. So the news dropped that NBA 2K development gets a major boost with new studio. Take 2 Interactive and 2K Sports announced via press release that they have acquired Austin, Texas based studio Hook Bang. The new studio will join Visual Concepts team in being renamed Visual Concepts Austin. So even though this was announced in March 23rd, 2021, it's actually not new news. The exciting thing to me is we bring all this tech to the party and now we have 3, 4, 5 years to tune that into the greatest game of all times. So if this isn't it, it puts us in the neighborhood of what that is, right? And as a team, development team, we're really hitting our stride right now. And I just say this as a caveat. We didn't make 2K21 current year, right? That was VC South. So don't get it twisted, right? If we still got the squad together, we still have all that experience. And I think you're going to see that in 2K21. That was actually an NBA 2K developer. And I was going through some of his old streams just to learn a little bit because developers have so much information and they rarely ever share it with the public. So I just wanted to know more. Now, in the original article announcing NBA 2K got a new dev team, they also mentioned that they've worked with this team in the past. In the video, you just heard it described as VC South and in the article is described as Visual Concepts Austin. So this seems to be the team that worked on the current gen version of the game. So my initial dick being hard about the new devs might not actually be all that much for the people planning on playing the next gen version of the game. Because what I now am theorizing is the case is that this new hook bank studio called Visual Concepts Austin is actually going to work on current gen 2K. While the visual concepts we all know that works in California is going to work on the next gen version of the game. Now, it gets really interesting here because 2K decided to make that commitment March 23rd, 2021. That's when the press release came out, right? Which is right at the end of quarter one, 2021, where they probably came to the conclusion that the current gen version of the game is going to sell a lot. So they should probably have their own dev team that'll drop the current gen versions of the game completely separate from the next gen experience on NBA 2K 21. So my initial optimism, I guess is kind of slowly dying down about the new developers because they don't seem to have anything to do with the next gen version of the game. Something to be optimistic about is we probably will get two completely different NBA 2K experiences every single year for the next few years. That's exciting. And I'm at least glad that 2K didn't commit to current gen by taking people away from next gen because, again, that, at theory, would come at the cost of the next gen version of the game. That's not what they did here. I think it's also important to note that when it comes to developing video games, a developer isn't like a job. Like, there's not just a developer that does all things from graphics to gameplay to AI to audio to lead designer and creative lead and marketing. Each person within the dev team has its own roles. So a person that works on the AI of the game might not have the tools and necessities to work on the graphics of the game. So taking someone that works on the art team for NBA 2K 21 to get them to work on current gen would never come at the cost of gameplay. It might come at the cost of level design. So the conversation, I guess, needs to be a little bit more specific because a developer just doesn't do all things. Even an indie developer doesn't do all things. They get people to fill other roles because you can't possibly be proficient at everything when it comes to game design. It's not possible. That'd be like if you found an NBA player that was great on the defensive and a great 3-point shooter can drive a great team leader. Huh. Now, that's Joel Embiid. You can't find them from time to time in the NBA. I take that back. So 2K is really just not sure where the direction of the game is going. The current gen version seems to be doing better. So they can't yet double triple down on the next gen version of the game. That's what it feels like. I mean, you even hear it in the way they are talking about the game. 2K is usually one to gloat and really flex how much their game sold in initial sales and in microtransactions. But when you read these reports here, they all look too confident. In an analyst call today, Take2 said NBA 2K21 sold more than 8 million copies across all platforms. And then engagement was up 14% per player. And you compare that to the way they were talking last year after they hit that 14 million number. Consumer engagement with NBA 2K continues to increase with DAUs increasing 82%. Micro users growing 78%. They get real specific when they're confident with their numbers. Recurrent consumer spending on NBA 2K grew 126% to a new record and were raised the largest contributor to that part of our business. That's what it sounds like when you had to win. When you win that year, this is what it sounds like, this paragraph here. Again, it's nothing to freak out about. Now I don't know too much about the development process, which is why I've been trying to research and learn more about it. I took some basic level Java script and coding classes when I was a little EDBD teeny bopper. And I quickly learned that wasn't for me. I don't know how y'all do with developers. Much love, you guys are fantastic. Now there might actually not be much to worry about because in the beginning of the video, I started by talking about this designer information. In this here live stream, I learned something. Well, you develop the tech in the first year. You improve it in the second year. And then by the third year, you can knock out all the bugs and all the inconsistencies. So usually it takes about three years. Which I guess kind of makes sense. Now it is kind of crazy to assume that a game that had a year of development can come off not only with a bunch of new features and sh- but also polished. That almost sounds impossible. Who need a dev team so colossal and a pandemic to have not have happened for that to even remotely stand a chance? And if you look back to the PS4 versions of NBA 2K, that information tracks. With 2K14 introducing a whole bunch of new stuff. Some good, some bad for the game. 2K15 kind of polishing a little bit. A lot of balance issues though, especially online in the PvP. And NBA 2K16 is where it all came together. Where the pro-am drop, the fantastic new mode, the defense felt great, the offense felt great. The overall perfect NBA 2K game that if you haven't watched the video I dropped a couple of months ago, trying to come to the conclusion on which 2K was the greatest of all time. NBA 2K16 won in a landslide. If you want to know why, click the top link in the description or watch just the end screen once this video is complete. There was also something else described in the video that I wish I time-markered. Where the developer in question here was explaining that there's some things in the gameplay that are too dangerous to touch. And I was like, I've never heard it described like that before. So they make changes to the things that they can change, but there's other changes to the gameplay that you make that might have a lot of unintended consequences. And so they're deemed too dangerous to touch. And I thought like, what was the instance of that happening in the NBA 2K series? And I quickly thought of NBA 2K18 with the snatchbacks and blowbacks. It was a feature that bogged the game down and made the gameplay almost unplayable or removed any and all skills gap. But I can't imagine, I was trying to raffle my brain and think of reasons why they wouldn't change it. Because I genuinely argued throughout the course of 2K18, if they made the game more vibrant and took out the blowbacks and snatchbacks, it would actually be a good game. It doesn't seem like a lot. So why 2K didn't do it, I don't understand. But I guess I'm hearing now that there's some things in the gameplay that are too dangerous to touch because that is at risk of breaking a whole lot of other things that are currently working. So as you sit here and you hear me talk about all this stuff, you begin to realize how it can become a little risky for 2K. But there's actually a new problem that these new generation games are having to deal with that no previous generation has had to deal with, especially at this scale. And that's that both Sony and Microsoft have been struggling to scale the release of these consoles. It has been 8 months and these consoles have released. 8 months? Maybe 6, 7 months now. And still it is very difficult to get a hold of these. Now you look at some industries like the shoe market and you know companies do that on purpose where they create scarcity because it actually drives sales. It's good for the market by creating scarcity. They make more money that way, more profitable. But I don't think Sony and Microsoft are trying to do that. There's been report after report after report of both Sony and Microsoft struggling to find the components they actually need to build their consoles likely due to the pandemic and also due to the scale at which people want these consoles. There's a lot of high demand. The scalpers definitely haven't helped the people using these bots and codes to get the consoles immediately and resell them at ridiculous prices. This article here says video game sales from Black Friday to Cyber Monday dropped 10% year over year as gamers seem to be waiting to upgrade consoles before buying more games. Console gamers specifically saw 13% drop in sales. And this is believable. If you just talk to the average person and you ask him like why didn't you play the next-gen version of NBA 2K 21? Why are you playing the current-gen version? Why are you watching current-gen instead of next-gen? It's because most people don't have the next-generation consoles yet. So if all things were equal there's a good chance that the next-gen version of the game might have been the obvious future. But with the obvious hurdles and roadblocks in the path right now 2K I guess isn't ready to double quadruple down on next-generation yet. They're still willing to give time to the current-gen version of the game. And that might be all for the better. Even if there was enough supply to meet the demand for the next-generation consoles some people just can't afford them. Part of the reason why 2K continued to drop the 2K 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 on current-gen, last-gen should I say. Even after most everybody moved on to the next-gen version of the game because some people just couldn't afford it and so those people shouldn't be left behind. Article from the gamer here was arguing the PlayStation 5 can miss a critical chance to get into a good hardware software upward spiral. As it stands, fewer than 1 in 3 PS5 consoles have sold the game. To put that in perspective, during the first four weeks of the Nintendo Switch 525,000 consoles were sold alongside 509,000 games. So not only is the console struggling to sell but as a result the games on next-gen are struggling to sell and that's no secret. Publishers and developers are actually pushing back and delaying the launch of their games because they know most people don't even have the consoles yet. Which is actually incentivizing a lot of developers and publishers to continue dropping on current-gen and on PC and to diversify because they can't put all their money in the eggs of the next-gen basket before everybody even has access to the next-gen. And based off no data and just what I've seen I think 2K just completely muffled the marketing for NBA 2K 21. A lot of people purchased the current-gen version of the game but people were holding out for the next-gen version because everybody was so excited for what it could offer. And then 2K just did a bad job of selling it. I actually didn't see any ads for NBA 2K until a week after the launch of the game. And even when I saw those ads, the ads were largely showcasing simulation gameplay, 5E5. And for the average consumer, they're gonna look at that and go that doesn't look any different than any previous 2K. 2K really should have showed off the stuff that made the next-gen version of the game unique. They should have talked about the gameplay innovations they made in the advertisements but really they should have showed off the city. The average consumer didn't know that 2K created an entire city in the game. Whether you like the city or not, you know it would have sold well if 2K just ran around telling people they had a city in the game. Because if the game sold fantastic and everybody hopped on next-gen and everybody was playing on the PS5 and the Xbox Series X success then 2K wouldn't have abandoned the game one month into launch going ghost and silent on all of us. And assuming that the developers quickly shifted their vision onto the NBA 2K 22 on the PS5 I'm fairly confident that they could add just something. Because 2K 21 next-gen wasn't even a horrible game, it was just dry. Like there wasn't enough fun involved. And after you get over the fact that they added a whole new city and NPCs and garage courts and rental courts and the fact that for the whole first month of the game you're playing on two frames per second, it was literally unplayable. Once you get over all of that, you're kind of just left with a game which at its core might not even be horrible gameplay. It might even be decent gameplay. It just wasn't fun enough to play. So 2K can sit here and listen to the community when we tell them add rewards for leveling up, good new rewards and bring back some old fun rewards too, have a good combination. Add a skills gap to the game, please. Add back the stage full time so there's actual stakes if we want there to be for the games that we play. NBA 2K 21 next-gen Prime is completely unplayable. You can play it, I guess, if you wanted to do private matches and you have like a whole community of people to play with. But the online experience is laggy at best, downright unplayable at worst. The game seems to be completely abandoned which gives nobody any real incentive to jump on and buy the game now. And you would think that heading into next generation that 2K might have took like a year and a half, two years to work on some of the technology for 2K 21 next-gen. Turns out, guys, they only had eight months to develop the game. Next-gen, it's not that it's difficult. It just allows you to do so much. You can get so specific that it creates just a mountain of work. And so usually when you jump tech, you know, things get easier. But what also happens is you have the ability to do more, you know what I mean, to make more specific decisions. And then that blows up what we call our data. And that just, that means more testing, more everything. So it was rough, but the development of it itself is pretty smooth. So all this stuff gets me excited that maybe eventually 2K can do this for PC because I know 2K has their partnerships with PlayStation and Xbox. And so, like, sometimes there's an incentive for you to play on the Xbox version of the game and in the PlayStation version of the game. But please, bro, if 2K actually took their time and made a good PC port, drop that on Steam and the mod community would just blow up. It would be so much fun to play. I think every content creator and most serious players would move over to PC if that ever happened. But for that to happen, 2K would have to get a new dev team to work on that or maybe just get their existing dev team because they do develop this thing on the PC. They would also need to come out with a good anti-cheat because if cheating is a problem on consoles, cheating will most definitely be a problem on PC. Part of me is a little hopeful that one day the PC version game will see that support. PC seems to be the biggest loser out of all this. It seems that the current gen versions of the NBA 2K 21 are going to be just fine now. The next gen version hopefully is going to see a lot more improvements. I guess adding those new developers also leaves space for the mobile version and the Nintendo Switch version of the game to hopefully see some improvements as well. So this is one of the rare circumstances where working on a whole bunch of different versions of the same thing and selling it as NBA 2K 22 might not actually come at the cost of the game. Well, that's the conclusion I came to. If you guys enjoyed the video, make sure to drop a like. If y'all knew, man, you made it this far. Subscribe to the channel. Drop a like. Let's try and hit 15,000, 20,000. We can get 20,000. And there's a video on the screen right now, ladies and gentlemen, where I try and come to the conclusion on which 2K is the greatest of all time. Go ahead, watch it if you missed it. I may catch you guys in the next one. I'm out.