EA Sports has walked away from developing its own college basketball video game.
First reported by Matt Brown of Extra Points, EA’s decision to no longer move forward with a college basketball game comes from schools deciding to move forward with 2K’s competing proposal.
Brown obtained a memo from EA Sports Vice President of Commercial Partnerships and Licensing Sean O’Brien that went out to licensing directors at schools and conferences. In the memo, O’Brien made the announcement that EA will be rescinding its original proposal.
“Given there are some schools choosing to accept the 2K Sports proposal for inclusion in NBA 2K, the offer to be included in a college basketball video game will unfortunately have to be rescinded,” O’Brien said. “Everyone at EA SPORTS is disappointed that we all couldn’t find an acceptable path forward, but we appreciate your support in trying to bring a stand-alone college basketball game with all men’s and women’s Division 1 institutions and student athletes, conferences, as well as the NCAA, in a way that fans have told us they want. We really appreciate your support.”
As of publishing, EA has yet to make a public statement on the decision. Should that come, it will be added to this story.
What Happened To EA Sports College Basketball?
EA Sports announced the return of college basketball on June 30 with a simple teaser on social media. The announcement came after it was revealed that the College Licensing Company had selected EA Sports’ proposal for a game to include every Division 1 men’s and women’s college basketball programs.
Over the following weeks and months, information regarding 2K Sports’ proposal came to light. At first, the proposal called for a college basketball mode to come to the NBA 2K franchise via paid DLC in MyTeam that would also include just a handful of teams. This would grow year over year with the goal, should the DLC perform well enough, to eventually create a standalone game.
That proposal would ultimately change to a standalone game featuring around 100 men’s and women’s programs rather than all of the teams that the EA game would’ve featured.
After that report, rumors began to bubble that the issues stemmed with EA wanting an exclusive license to produce a college basketball game. Despite having it with football, schools weren’t comfortable with it for basketball due to EA not having produced a basketball game since 2018. That led to hesitancy and schools even signing non-exclusive agreements with 2K.
As reported by GPlayr in the past, sources at 2K believed that they had the better option for programs due to the ability to get a game out sooner. Talking with more sources over the last few days, there is a plan to eventually include all Division 1 programs in a game should the first proposed game do well and it become a regular series.
What do you think about where things are with college basketball video games? Let us know down below, and take the discussion further in the GPlayr forums.
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