OS Roundtable: What Will You Remember From This Past Decade of Sports Games?

[ChaseB]

Jeff Botkin: NCAA Football 14 will be the lasting memory for me in the past decade...

Written By: Chase Becotte

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[PhillsPhan26]

The NHL series not advancing in any way what so ever is disturbing.

[nddurst]

Quote: Originally Posted by PhillsPhan26

The NHL series not advancing in any way what so ever is disturbing.

This. And more generally, EA Sports' decline over the decade when it comes to their product. Shifting their focus toward online Ultimate Team modes and away from innovations making the gamelplay and experience more realistic or enjoyable (specifically franchise modes).

NHL is the worst (best) example of this.

[King of Kings]

How stale and complacent sports games were in general. Modes from previous generations were removed and focus was heavily placed on annoying multiplayer card games. Developers seemed to think shiny new graphics (which also got stale after the first couple of years in the generation's cycle) would be enough to keep offline/single player customers returning. This generation of sports games should have been miles ahead of PS2/Xbox games and they weren't. In most cases, aside from graphics, they were equal to or less than games from 15-20 years ago.

The mishandling of sports games from this generation is the main reason I might not buy into PS5/Xbox Series X. I mostly play sports games and* don't trust the developers to suddenly stop being lazy and lacking innovation just because new consoles are arriving.

[eye guy]

It’s easy to say NBA 2K11 as the most memorable game but for me NBA Live 10 is an underrated standout title that was leaps and bounds better than both previous Live and 2K titles as well as 2K10.

its a shame that EA didn’t want to build on what they had with Live *10 and Mike Wang’s departure soon after release showed that EA *weren’t happy with the direction Wang wanted to take them in.

A most definite “what if” story /title.

[sheredia]

the focus for most sports games being utlimate team and microtransactions instead of* franchise modes, create-a-team, etc. however, 2k was the only franchise who did make signifcant strides with adding classic teams, customization with myleagues, myplayer, etc.