{"id":270246,"date":"2025-09-06T16:52:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T16:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/270246\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T16:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T16:52:16","slug":"ea-backing-out-of-the-college-basketball-game-is-a-major-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/270246\/","title":{"rendered":"EA Backing Out of the College Basketball Game is a Major Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sports video game genre is filled with options for fans of basically all major sports. There are golf games, football games, pro basketball games, soccer games, hockey games, and games for tennis, fighting (UFC, for example), baseball, and pretty much everything else. If it\u2019s a professional sport, there\u2019s probably a game for it that represents that sport\u2019s league. There\u2019s even, thanks to a lengthy effort, a college football game<\/a>. College football has unique intricacies that set it apart from the NFL, somewhat justifying the existence of the two. One that is actually not represented whatsoever, though, is college basketball<\/a>. Not anymore, anyway.<\/p>\n

The last time there was a college basketball video game was NCAA Basketball 10 in 2009, so it\u2019s been much longer than the gap between NCAA Football 14 and EA Sports College Football 25. After the massive success the game ended up being, EA decided to bring back the college basketball series in another important revival. Unfortunately, they\u2019ve just backed out of that plan<\/a>, and that\u2019s a major loss for the genre and perhaps for gaming as a whole.<\/p>\n

EA Sports\u2019 College Basketball Game No Longer Happening Deserves Mourning<\/p>\n

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By no means is EA Sports<\/a> a phenomenal developer. Look at the recent history of Madden for plenty of examples. They tend to phone it in every year and make cash grabs that only slightly upgrade and change rosters from the prior year\u2019s version. But College Football 25 was different. The 2026 version is not quite as good, but it\u2019s still very clear that EA does care about college sports, at least in the first game reviving the series.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair to assume that the same would\u2019ve been evident for any EA college basketball<\/a> game. That\u2019s a pretty substantial loss, even if the sports genre is majorly oversaturated with yearly releases (which this probably would\u2019ve been) that feature microtransactions, but it would\u2019ve at least filled a niche in the genre that\u2019s currently untouched. March Madness is so special, and to be able to experience it and try to have one\u2019s own Cinderella run would\u2019ve been incredible in a video game, but it probably isn\u2019t happening anymore. <\/p>\n

College Basketball Remains a Hole in the Sports Genre<\/p>\n

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According to a report, EA Sports is pulling out of its planned game because some colleges had decided to work with rival 2K Sports in an NBA game. That ultimately means that there will be a select few universities represented as part of the MyCAREER mode in NBA 2K27<\/a> and future iterations, but there will be no college basketball video game. The other programs, both small and unheralded, as well as the big ones that don\u2019t make the final 2K cut, just get left out in the cold entirely. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, based on EA vice president Sean O\u2019Brien\u2019s comments<\/a>, it just appears as if this game is dead in the water. Because those schools are working with 2K Sports, there just won\u2019t be a game at all. Not one without those schools, because O\u2019Brien wanted to try to \u201cbring a standalone college basketball game with all men\u2019s and women\u2019s Division 1 institutions and student athletes, conferences as well as the NCAA.\u201d It was all or nothing for EA, and now, it\u2019s nothing, leaving a hole that just won\u2019t be filled. <\/p>\n

Why EA Should Reconsider Its Stance<\/p>\n

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EA Sports <\/a>is being a little bit petty. Understandably, they don\u2019t want to work with 2K Sports, being that they\u2019re the other major sports game developer, but there\u2019s not much crossover there in general. They don\u2019t really compete like that because 2K Sports handles golf, basketball, and WWE. EA, on the other hand, runs football, soccer, hockey, and UFC. They don\u2019t directly compete within those areas, especially since NBA Live ended years ago. <\/p>\n

There doesn\u2019t have to be exclusivity, either. There\u2019s not a recent precedent for this, but there\u2019s no reason the two sides can\u2019t just agree to use the same schools. NBA 2K is not going to be threatened by a college basketball game because they remain very different styles of the same sport. The inverse is true for EA Sports\u2019 college franchise because it brings things to the table you just can\u2019t get from 2K. <\/p>\n

EA is playing hardball here in what appears to be an attempt to make 2K Sports<\/a> lose out, but they\u2019re not going to. The schools agreed to it, so the only losers here are EA and college basketball fans. EA Sports is self-sabotaging now, and there\u2019s really no valid excuse for it. Unfortunately, we\u2019re all worse off (and this is coming from someone who thinks sports video games are not good for the gaming industry<\/a>) because of it.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Are you mourning the loss of this college basketball series that won\u2019t be? Let us know below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sports video game genre is filled with options for fans of basically all major sports. There are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,26863,231,772,1544,44938],"class_list":{"0":"post-270246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-ea-sports","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaab","14":"tag-regular-feature"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115158394172203393","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}