If you were asked which is the best sports simulation video game on the market, which would you place your bet on — the ever popular FIFA series from EA Sports or NBA 2K game that NBA and basketball fans are obsessed with?
Now here’s a thing. In the world of sports video games — bragging rights – that right to give a virtual finger to the competitord matters a lot. This isn’t just a concern for those that play the games but game manufacturers are of course in their own tournament bracket of sorts.
It’s true that EA Sports’ FIFA franchise of games is the most widely known soccer video game around the globe and it’s also true that football is world’s most popular sport ever. All that said, basketball has been enjoying an unbelievable growth in popularity with the increasing visibility of the game and the NBA. That’s why the NBA 2K series, and not NBA Live, has been the best basketball video games of choice for many years. When we say best, we mean the most-popular.
Let’s again set the bar and talk about what “best” means in the context of this article. Best for the sake of this piece is a proxy for the popularity between NBA 2K and FIFA. When we talk popularity, it comes down to sales numbers.
In that numbers game and as far as sales are concerned, we have the latest sales data. When looking at the most recent sales popularity data, we relied on Statista: NBA 2K18 wins clearly over the sales of FIFA 2018 hitting the $10 million mark in early January NBA 2K18 was the bestselling sports video game of 2018 and the second best-selling sports video game overall.
The game features of NBA 2K18 proved to be so popular because it has advanced greatly compared to other entries, especially within the team synergy feature. The players appear to know their roles far more clearly and do not engage in those annoying random moves half as much
As you can see from the renderings of Paul George and Kawhi Leonard in their new Clippers uniforms, NBA 2K’s teammate artificial intelligence can not be described as ‘picture perfect’ but it’s still pretty good adding to the game. Probably the main drawback to the game are the micro-transactions which can become a bind as the goal is to raise points for in-game purchases – even the most fun games can become an unpleasant grind when this feature is in place.
FIFA 2018 was all about offensive play with the offensive controls and options so precise they made playing defines incredibly frustrating to play. This imbalance made game scores fly way too high and took away the believe-ability away from the game – not everyone wants a soccer equivalent of an NBA Jam.
In the end, when the two video games are weighed side by side the NBA 2K18 does a better job of translating the actual game into a believable video game and that is what it’s all about with any sports video game (unless the developer has deliberately gone for a gimmicky game.)
Sports Video Games: The More It’s Real, the Better
Sports video games succeed or fail based on how well the recreate the game experience and the closer the developers get to the real thing, the more popular the game will be. This works for most of the games you can play and this is also why online games, especially online casinos are a firm favorite with many people who enjoy all the action of casino life but who simply cannot get to a brick and mortar casino or take a break in Las Vegas.
High-end online casinos like MrQ Casino offer all the fun and action of a bricks and mortar casino but from the comfort of your own home or if you are on the move from your mobile device. Today you can even pay for your games using your phone bill or pay as you go balance which means that you don’t have to give over your banking details – a big plus for those concerned about identity theft or fraud.
It’s amazing to think that despite football being the sport of choice around the world that NBA 2K is the leader in selling basketball video games. There’s a lot of factors at play in putting that number together, but we’ll leave it at NBA 2K as the best sports video game on the market.
