No Early Draft Combine for NBA 2K11

After some speculation the news has officially come down that there will be no Draft Combine released for NBA 2K11. An extension of My Player mode which provided character creation, drills, and scrimmages for the start of the career mode came out over a month in advance of the release of NBA 2K10 as a download on XBL and PSN and sold for $5. In many ways it was essentially a quasi pay-for demo with it being the first opportunity to try out 2K10 arriving even well before gameplay videos.

The NBA 2K10 Draft Combine sold well for one week but then fell off a cliff due to a limited shelf life but it is impossible to know whether the development that went into it paid off through either purchases or leaps to buying the full game because of it. It was also largely responsible for the demo not coming out any earlier (it hit only days before release of the game). The Draft Combine will now just fold into the full game and be the start of My Player.

Hopefully this means that NBA 2K11 will push out the demo farther in advance so as to collect community feedback. From the sounds of it the demo will also be a little more extensive than just the normal short quarters game. It would seem likely that there will be some form of “The Jordan Challenge” provided, maybe one of the 10 scenarios or an exclusive one for the demo which would surely generate increased interest.