Honest Question: Is the Sports Genre in Video Games Dead?

[ALonelyDad]

it is funny how you rarely hear about big new gameplay features for these games anymore, the marketing almost entirely revolves around who’s on the cover.

There is just no incentive for them to do any overhauls when they have guaranteed sales. This is why zero competition stinks, every major sports game has zero competition. We are at the lowest part of sports gaming era imo.

 

[Software]

it is funny how you rarely hear about big new gameplay features for these games anymore, the marketing almost entirely revolves around who’s on the cover.

Nah you do but they just lie about them. For instance they added a dunk meter in game when you're trying to dunk on someone and it was supposed to be a game changer but that shyt is basically unusable online due to how shytty servers are due to lag.
They supposedly are adding more actual animations from players this year using motion capture software from clips of players playing. But as usual it won't matter because people will all use the same 10 animations because they are just better than the others either due to frames or some other shyt that makes it give you an advantage.
To be fair though as a yearly released game big gameplay changes don't happen unless you skip a few releases to see them complete what would be an actual dev cycle for other AAA games.
It's just the nickel and dining for upgrades and buying a new game every year for what could just be a patch on the old game that they could charge like $15 bucks for
Sports games and shooters are microtransaction heaven for the companies now. Casuals don't vote with their wallets they just suck it up or stop playing.
Guarantee for 2k they upped the microtransaction ante this year because they got Kobe number as part of the title and on the cover so they banking on people paying homage to his death to collect extra bread and go ham on the transactions too. Mfers disgust me.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

It's just the nickel and dining for upgrades and buying a new game every year for what could just be a patch on the old game that they could charge like $15 bucks for

Yeah, realistically 2k/Madden/FIFA should be what warzone is, just a F2P game with seasonal updates but they still make too much money doing full releases every year to ever consider it

 

[Software]

Yeah, realistically 2k/Madden/FIFA should be what warzone is, just a F2P game with seasonal updates but they still make too much money doing full releases every year to ever consider it

Benefiting by conditioning of the consumer. Back on the ps1-ps2 era they couldn't send out a patch to add new players and updates to the games so they released a new one every year. Now they have that capability but just using the fact everyone is used to it due to the past go keep charging that bread. It's funny how when game prices increased to $70 2k was immediately tryna charge the extra $10. For real don't even hide their greed they didn't do $10 more worth of dev work on the game.

shyt laughable and I can't even tell people nothing. These kids buy it every year. My girlfriend nephew is like 17 he been getting his dad to buy him 2k every year since he was like 11. He seen my girlfriend games and looked at God of war and Skyrim and said to her "oh you play those weird games"
I think that statement right there determines why this shyt ain't gonna change. Casuals don't venture out.
Genre won't die but it'll just never innovate. Plus sports games require too big of a budget to compete with EA or 2k. We ain't gonna have a Larian or CD Project red type studio come and bust down the doors and innovate the genre. At least not for the big 3 sports.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

Benefiting by conditioning of the consumer. Back on the ps1-ps2 era they couldn't send out a patch to add new players and updates to the games so they released a new one every year. Now they have that capability but just using the fact everyone is used to it due to the past go keep charging that bread. It's funny how when game prices increased to $70 2k was immediately tryna charge the extra $10. For real don't even hide their greed they didn't do $10 more worth of dev work on the game.

shyt laughable and I can't even tell people nothing. These kids buy it every year. My girlfriend nephew is like 17 he been getting his dad to buy him 2k every year since he was like 11. He seen my girlfriend games and looked at God of war and Skyrim and said to her "oh you play those weird games"
I think that statement right there determines why this shyt ain't gonna change. Casuals don't venture out.
Genre won't die but it'll just never innovate. Plus sports games require too big of a budget to compete with EA or 2k. We ain't gonna have a Larian or CD Project red type studio come and bust down the doors and innovate the genre. At least not for the big 3 sports.

Yeah, on top of all that the licensing and marketing tie-ins make it almost impossible for new players to enter.

 

[IsThatBrothaMouzone?]

Sports game got stagnant and then the action/adventure/RPG games leveled up and shot wayyyyy past them.

GoT, Last of Us, Elden Ring, GTAV, Skyrim, HZD/HFW, GoW, Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed etc., give so much bang for the buck...you see the quality that goes into those games and then realize that sports game haven't been the same in 10+ years.

I used to love playing sports games but they just don't hold my attention anymore. A good boxing game would be fun but hoops and football just don't move the needle.

 

[Tunez]

YouTube community ruined COD and NBA 2k

 

[JordanwiththeWiz]

The Devs got too greedy and started creating sports games centered around micro transactions.

 

[Regular_P]

There is just no incentive for them to do any overhauls when they have guaranteed sales. This is why zero competition stinks, every major sports game has zero competition. We are at the lowest part of sports gaming era imo.

The lack of options is so depressing. I remember all the choices we had across sports in the late 90s and early 2000s.

The NBA had a bunch of different games: Live, Shootout, In The Zone, Kobe Bryant Courtside Basketball and 2K for more serious play plus NBA Jam and NBA Street for straight arcade experiences.

The NFL had Madden, Gameday, Quarterback Club and 2K with NFL Blitz and NFL Xtreme for arcade games.

There were a lot of MLB games; I can't even remember them all. What I remember was Triple Play, The Show (before it was The Show), Ken Griffey Jr. and High Heat.

Hockey was basically NHL and the FaceOff series with 2K around 2000.

I know the main franchises now have a stranglehold (and there's nothing to be done about the NFL ) but sports games feels ripe for disruption.

 

[FlyRy]

the fun is gone. shyt is boring af now

 

[Womb Raider]

The fun is definitely gone. I used to be able to play a whole franchise season at once, now I can only play one game before I get bored….Superstar mode was great then they took it away, MyPlayer was great then they made it pay to win….idk sports games aren’t what they used to be and they never will. We ain’t even getting games like Tony Hawk, Freekstyle, Aggressive In-line, BMX whatever, ever again.

 

[ball15life]

The Devs got too greedy and started creating sports games centered around micro transactions.

I think it's this also. Gamespot reviewer wrote about it



"To my memory, the video game industry changed after Star Wars Battlefront 2, a game that was also set to feature brazen pay-to-win mechanics. The blowback from players and critics was so severe that it got on Disney's radar, which reportedly told EA to fix the problem. It did so by swiftly removing those pay-to-win elements and fundamentally reimagining the game's economy and progression before it even officially launched. This quickly spread to other games from other publishers over subsequent months and years, and today, though MTX are more common than ever in console and PC games, they are rarely ever gameplay-affecting.

But in the sports gaming world, there is no outcry, because despite how popular the games are, their players are still often voluntarily partitioned from the core gaming community that might read reviews, download gaming podcasts, and comment on articles. They are passionate about their sports games but sometimes otherwise disinterested in the medium. Without that outcry to demand change from fans, there is no corporation worried about its public image pressuring a publisher to fix a pay-to-win problem. And without a competitor's version in stores, as is the case with most major sports games, fans can only choose between playing the one version of their favorite simulated sport or playing none at all.

Leagues like the NFL and NBA must adore the pay-to-win modes in their video games, as they boost both the league's and the game's popularity while presumably stuffs the league's coffers, too. Sports games never got their economic revolution like other console games, so today they still look more like the mobile gaming world: a hellscape of purchase screens and artificial progress blockers meant to entice you to skip the wait a few dollars at a time."

What's Even The Point Of Sports Game Reviews?

As we head into another cycle of annual sports games, is anyone really listening?

www.gamespot.com

 

[Nero Christ]

I think it's this also. Gamespot reviewer wrote about it



"To my memory, the video game industry changed after Star Wars Battlefront 2, a game that was also set to feature brazen pay-to-win mechanics. The blowback from players and critics was so severe that it got on Disney's radar, which reportedly told EA to fix the problem. It did so by swiftly removing those pay-to-win elements and fundamentally reimagining the game's economy and progression before it even officially launched. This quickly spread to other games from other publishers over subsequent months and years, and today, though MTX are more common than ever in console and PC games, they are rarely ever gameplay-affecting.

But in the sports gaming world, there is no outcry, because despite how popular the games are, their players are still often voluntarily partitioned from the core gaming community that might read reviews, download gaming podcasts, and comment on articles. They are passionate about their sports games but sometimes otherwise disinterested in the medium. Without that outcry to demand change from fans, there is no corporation worried about its public image pressuring a publisher to fix a pay-to-win problem. And without a competitor's version in stores, as is the case with most major sports games, fans can only choose between playing the one version of their favorite simulated sport or playing none at all.

Leagues like the NFL and NBA must adore the pay-to-win modes in their video games, as they boost both the league's and the game's popularity while presumably stuffs the league's coffers, too. Sports games never got their economic revolution like other console games, so today they still look more like the mobile gaming world: a hellscape of purchase screens and artificial progress blockers meant to entice you to skip the wait a few dollars at a time."

What's Even The Point Of Sports Game Reviews?

As we head into another cycle of annual sports games, is anyone really listening?

www.gamespot.com

Couldn't have said it better and this is the perfect example of what "gaming journalism" should be.

 

[desjardins]

They will never die because the online sports gaming community isn't going anywhere
I mainly play franchise mode offline, probably makes up like 90% of my gaming. I acknowledge that the sports game don't innovate and often have major bugs so I just don't buy them often since I have no problem playing franchise mode with all computer generated players. My latest Madden is 2018, I only have 2k23 cause it was free on PSN+