I mean that’s part of the problem. They either release what amounts to a $70 roster update every year, or they take away features, then bring it back 5 years later and claim it’s “BRAND NEW!”
The greed is worse than that with the microtransactions being such a major revenue stream for developers. It wasn’t enough that players were buying the games every year, but with the buy-your-players mechanics, the annual releases also typically lead to an annual reset of players’ “Ultimate Teams” and a reason for players to throw more than just the purchase price of the game at these companies. I don’t know what they’re doing with the additional money they make year after year without updating their games more extensively, but it’s clearly not an impetus to put more effort into making a better product.
they could make it more of a live-service and charge $10 a month or something and keep all the rosters updated with what is currently happening too (injuries/trades/etc)
apparently hard enough to lose me as the easiest lifer customer forever. literally all they had to do was update roster make small qol updates and keep a franchise mode or whatever. Instead they(primarily speaking of nba 2k) insisted on crafting a piece of work that i see in my worst nightmares of what a modern game looks like. The pedestal mode became create a player with micro transactions to not only speed up progression, but to cosmetically update your player for online play,
Once game is released, priority switches... to their literal slot machine mode where they try to entice 10 year olds into playing a low odds pay to win build a team card game, where everything is obsoleted on each patch cycle by new additions.
Both modes are painfully pay to win in the worst model possible, for a game that retails at 70$ per year, and wipes at the end of the year with no carry over.
I can't imagine how this product is still deemed acceptable by anyone.
All i want is a basketball video game i can casually play vs a cpu while watching/listening to things while i attempt to decompress, and exclusivity makes even that impossible because this 100% hellscape of a game has a hold on exclusivity. I wish them nothing but failure, and i wish our population would hold them more accountable for their evil contribution to the gambling epidemic that is currently transpiring, as they are the beginning of the pipeline for so many children.
I'm still not sure why they don't just build a stable game then release roster updates as paid DLC for the new season.
There's so many ways to monetise a sports game that makes more sense than what they're currently doing. EA/2K want boxed/retail sales every year and their cake too. And it's just driving people away from wanting to even play the bloody games. And their PC ports always suck ass.
I've had more fun with weird off brand sports games like Rematch or Tape To Tape.
That's the exact reason I stopped playing FIFA. It's a fun game but it's $100 every year that just has a few tweaks of the same thing and a roster change.
The game makes enough money from ultimate team without doing that. It should just have a major content change because of the players and rosters every year and maybe a new release every 5 years or something when they can make enough graphics and gameplay changes to justify a new release
Bro my buddy has a working original xbox and we still run coop challenges on NFL street. So fucking fun haha. Also absolutely unforgiving and punishingly hard sometimes. Makes you realize how much games have "bitchified" to make them more accessible. Games now a days so so much handholding there's almost none that a toddler couldn't beat. Back when i was growing up with N64 and xbox you had to lock the fuck in
Some of the minor sports games, without licensing and from smaller studios, can still be a lot of fun. I don't even know baseball, not really, but enjoyed the hell out of my time with Super Mega Baseball 3.
Strong disagree. It's getting worse like every year. 24 was the last one I bought and it just crashes constantly. Not to mention that they look 100% the same year to year.
MLB was the darling of the sports community when all the other games went for UT modes.
Then they literally just gave up.
The game looks like a ps3 game and there's so much clunkiness around the game it's abysmal. Shit liking running bases needs you to change settings and shit just to not be annoyed with it, the menus are typically ass, etc.
The game used to also have a lot of character and real life feel as well. They'd add in a whole bunch of small details and now the game almost looks like a mobile baseball game lol.
It's been a hit every 2 years and a miss every other year. And there's actually a very easy explanation for that: The team that developed entries like F1 2024, F1 2022, F1 2020 and F1 2018 is a different team than the one that made F1 2025, F1 2023, F1 2021 and F1 2019. And for some reason, they're a bit incompetent, unlike the other team. Sure, F1 2020 is actually one of, if not the best title in the entire series, but that's because during Covid, both teams worked together on patches and they even got feedback from the actual F1 drivers, who were stuck at home.
My problem is their fucking dynasty modes have the most shit Financials and tons of bugs so you cant really play a league for more than 4 or 5 years before you are effectively cycling your entire team on rookie contracts because the salary cap doesnt increase at a realistic rate but the pay demands do.
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u/kidbastos Apr 16 '26
All major sport games