R.I.P.
This should not come as a surprise:2K Sports yesterday confirmed that NHL 2K12 will not be published on any console, likely ending that simulation's run.
..."2K Sports will not release an NHL title for consoles this year," the company told Kotaku, without any elaboration.
The 2K series had been, well, not good for years, even though NHL2K3 is still one of my favorite hockey games ever. Treyarch developed that game, and then Kush took over.
Uh-oh. Kush was where good games went to die. Kush games always looked better, but never really worked right.
Here was the decline and fall:
NHL2K3 (Treyarch): average ranking of 86 (thanks GameRankings.com)
NHL2K5 (Kush): 86
NHL2K6 (Kush): 79
NHL2K7 (Kush): 79
NHL2K8 (Kush): 74
Then Visual Concepts took over and finished ruining the game.
This is one of those cases where there's not much left to mourn. It was a great game, in its day, but its day had passed a long, long time ago. It wasn't selling, and it wasn't selling because it wasn't very good.
So here's what's left of 2KSports: basketball and baseball. And believe me, 2K will be leaving skid marks in the driveway as soon as the MLB license expires, because those have been a financial disaster.
There's just not much left in the world of console sports games: one supremely brilliant hockey game (NHL), one brilliant basketball game (NBA2K), an excellent soccer game (FIFA), and a whole bunch of crap.
Sadly.
<< Home