Those who buy used games will have to pay $10 over Xbox Live or PlayStation Network to activate the service.
For October, NBA 2K11 is the sales leader among all video games (counting sales on all platforms.) NBA 2K11 earned the first Editor's Choice gold star ever awarded by Kotaku in its new review format, and later was nominated for overall Game of the Year alongside Call of Duty: Black Ops, Mass Effect 2, and Red Dead Redemption.Įlectronic Arts' "Project $10" comes home to roost for sports gamers in April, when EA Sports announces that multiplayer features beginning with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 will be accessible only through a one-use code shipping free in retail copies. The Jordan Challenge, a 10-game re-creation of His Airness' most showstopping performances, tapped a reservoir of nostalgia across all sports fans, not just basketball diehards.Īfter the game's launch, overall excitement and celebrity hype helped it remain a trending topic on Twitter for a solid week, practically unheard-of for any video game of any genre. In mid-spring, 2K Sports revealed it had s igned Michael Jordan as both a cover star and a playable athlete in-game by E3, it was clear that Visual Concepts (2K's in-house studio) had a monster game coming down the chute. 2010 began with 2K Sports stealing back Mike Wang from EA Canada - NBA Live 10's dramatic improvements had been credited to Wang's one-year defection north. Though it is indeed a terrible game, the cancellation places NBA Elite 11 in a pantheon of rare video game collectibles.ĭeepening EA Sports' misery over NBA Elite's failure to launch was the comprehensive excellence of its competitor, NBA 2K11, which proved to be a quantum leap even for the dominant performer in basketball video games. Finally, a few NBA Elite 11 discs do make it out into the wild one gamer lands a retail copy from an eBay seller for $255. NBA Elite was then reassigned from Canada to Tiburon, the home of the publisher's Madden, NCAA Football and PGA Tour games. The general managers of EA's two sports studios, Canada and Tiburon (in Florida), lost their titles in an organizational shakeup, with Canada's boss leaving the company altogether. While the EA chief said he was proud of the company's ability to make a very tough, very painful call, the outcome for the Elite team w as not an A-for-effort slap on the butt. "We would have probably lost 5-1 in the marketplace against that and firmly cemented a reputation for being one to ship secondary sports titles."
"We could have shipped a product we weren't proud of dead against their game that they are proud of and that we would have been proud of to ship ourselves," Riccitiello told Kotaku. Riccitiello, in a candid discussion with Kotaku's Stephen Totilo, acknowledged that glitches highlighted by a b rutally humiliating YouTube video of Elite's demo helped seal the game's fate. The decision went all the way to the desk of Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello, and his call to bag Elite marked the first time an annual, fully licensed sports game failed to release since Madden NFL 96. Kotaku's roundup of 2010 is not of the routine stories, but the ones that had the most lasting impact on this year, and should into next year, too.īy far the biggest sports news of the year was also one of video gaming's biggest controversies overall - the cancellation of EA Sports' renamed, remade NBA Elite 11.
And 2010 was like most years before it, with its share of cover athlete announcements, new features, and top performers following last year's edition with solid successes. We expect the routine with sports video games, the only genre consistently delivering sequels on an annual basis. And they're not always clear-cut, either.
Every year in sports has its winners and losers, but in sports video games, the results aren't about pennants and trophies.