Faculty basketball is making its manner again into the digital world. On Thursday, 2K Sports activities introduced that it’ll quickly embrace school basketball applications in its NBA online game franchise on the heels of EA Sports activities reportedly rescinding its licensing supply to create a standalone sport.
In its announcement, 2K revealed that its “school basketball expertise” will function greater than 100 applications that can present up within the sport over the subsequent two years with “just a few surprises” slated for early 2026 and “massive plans for 2027 and past.”
“Sure, it is true,” 2K wrote in an announcement. “We’re engaged on a university basketball expertise that can function greater than 100 applications from throughout the nation, from powerhouses to Cinderella tales. Competitors fuels high quality in any respect ranges, which is why our strategy with school basketball ensures our accomplice faculties, school athletes and our gamers all profit. Extra excellent news – you will not have to attend lengthy to start out seeing your favourite schools present up within the sport. We have massive plans for 2027 and past, and even just a few surprises coming early in 2026.”
After the return of EA Sports activities’ school soccer franchise, there has lengthy been hypothesis that hoops would additionally make a comeback. However the sport’s precise growth has been murky. Again in June, EA Sports activities teased the return of its school hoops sport for the primary time since 2009, and Additional Factors reported that the corporate was concentrating on a launch date in 2028.
Nevertheless, a Tuesday report from Additional Factors revealed that EA Sports activities despatched out a memo to licensing administrators for particular person faculties and conferences saying that it was rescinding its licensing supply as a result of some faculties had already accepted a proposal from 2K to be concerned with its NBA franchise.
“Given there are some faculties selecting to just accept the 2K Sports activities proposal for inclusion in NBA 2K, the supply to be included in a university basketball online game will sadly should be rescinded,” the memo says.
“Everybody at EA SPORTS is disenchanted that all of us could not discover a suitable path ahead, however we recognize your help in attempting to carry a stand-alone school basketball sport with all males’s and girls’s Division 1 establishments and scholar athletes, conferences in addition to the NCAA, in a manner that followers have advised us they need. We actually recognize your help.”
In contrast to EA Sports activities’ proposal for a standalone school hoops sport, the 2K proposal concerned a university gameplay format, based on Additional Factors:
In contrast to EA Sports activities, the 2K bid didn’t name for the inclusion of each single D-I males’s and girls’s basketball program. As an alternative, a unique CLC memo detailed the 2K proposal as a non-exclusive license to provide a “5v5 event gameplay format built-in into NBA 2K MyTeam Mode by way of downloadable content material (DLC).” 2K would consider the viability of a standalone school basketball title, relying on the monetary efficiency of faculty basketball DLC.
The final version of NCAA Basketball was launched by EA Sports activities in November of 2009, and then-Oklahoma star Blake Griffin was on the quilt. A yr earlier was the final time 2K Sports activities produced its school basketball sport. Poor gross sales brought on each corporations to stop creating these video games.