Response from EA regarding end of College Hoops series
January 15, 2008 by pastapadre
Yesterday when the news broke that the 2K’s College Hoops 2K9 had been canceled a lot of people jumped to the conclusion that there was an exclusive license in the works that and that EA Sports was positioning themselves for it. However with the relatively low sales of college basketball games and Take Two’s statement, which specifically did not use the word exclusive, that seemed to be an unreasonable assumption.
Today EA has responded to requests from Kotaku, who originally broke the story about the end of the College Hoops series. It seemed odd that EA would be expected to comment on a rival’s business decision but they said enough to clear the air on the situation.
2k and CLC are in the best position to comment on College Hoops. EA is in the middle of a long-term license with the CLC and we expect to stay in the college basketball category.
So the NCAA license was up for renewal and Take Two decided that it wasn’t in their best interest to pay for the rights and continue to produce College Hoops. There seems to be a misunderstanding out there that if there is no exclusive license that anyone can make a game using the rights but that isn’t the case, it just means that multiple companies have the ability to negotiate contracts for those rights. This seems to have been solely a business decision that took into consideration factors such as low sales and the current state of Take Two as had been previously suggested.
I wont be playing College Basketball games anymore, this sucks.
so they wont pay the money to make college hoops but they will for the bigs, APF, and the japanese baseball game?
sean wrote:
The BIGS makes sense because they were utilizing the MLB license they already own. Same as EA does by not just leaving it to Madden but making Street/Tour and Head Coach. They need to do that to extend the value they get out of the contracts.
The announcement of Prizefighter given the current atmosphere there is definitely puzzling though.
The cost to put together APF, with all those individual player licenses, along with the money they shelled out for the MLB license (which EA dropped out on because they didn’t think it was a smart investment) has definitely had an effect on the whole 2K Sports division to where College Hoops is sacrificed and who knows what other developments there will be in the future.
college hoops probably out sold APF and will outsell prize fighter. this also hurts nba 2k fans because you cant import your draft classes
sean wrote:
And in turn will take away some of those sells because people want to import players, this was a stupid move that will show when EA brings a playable game to the table, I didn’t really like the College game that much anyway, it was fun for a little while but got frustrating and boring, while NBA 2k8 is still fun, I hate to say it but graphics could be a factor to this…..
Hopefully the will continue to let you import CH 2K8 players in to future titles.
You have to admit that the college games for both 2k and ea both had worse graphics and other problems that made them worse in terms of a basketball game than their nba counter parts
this is b.s. real talk…that’s all i got to say
WHYYYYYyyyyyyyyyy….. THis sucks man. I hate EA they suck and will never come close to how 2k Sports makes their games and how funn they are!! EA SUCKS!!!!!!
2K SPORTS ROCKS your SOCKS!!!!!