My cynical take is that the rights to any video games for those franchises are owned by the likes of EA, who just like recycling the same game over and over, year to year, because it’s cheap and easy and brings in a boatload of profit from Mtx. Developing a new arcade style sports game would cost money and not be the guaranteed cash cow of, say, Madden 23.
I think it’s because they got wise to licensing. If you secure the rights to an official sports league’s image, they will demand that the models are impeccable and the simulated advertisements are grand and that the gameplay is accurate. This means you need to have incredible graphics and at that rate you need to make an overly complex game to justify that massive cost.
Meanwhile games like Tape to Tape turn 2d hockey into a roguelike. There’s no way you could convince the NHL to put real people into an (expertly stylized) 2.5d aesthetic these days. The only reason a game like Backyard Baseball got it was because it had intense appeal to the kids on PC, before there was NBA 2K9
Yeah the exclusivity contracts have ruined sports games.
They had their moment in the early 00s, but they went away largely because people stopped buying them. Even though Hitz and Blitz showed some of the more-cringeworthy aspects of their sports, the sales were good enough for the licensors to not really care.
If Tape-to-Tape ends up selling well, you’ll see the NHL pushing for their own officially-licensed version (because nobody in that league has any original ideas). The same goes for other arcadey sports games.
MLB tried to bring back arcadey games with RBI Baseball (through their Advanced Media arm) – without it, the only annual baseball game would be Sony’s “The Show”. They wound that down when MLBAM signed a deal to publish The Show on non-Sony platforms. I’d think that, if the sales justified it, they’d be happy to continue selling both sim and arcade games.
There was an “Ultimate Rivals” sports series on Apple Arcade, which I thought was kinda popular. They were also going to port a few games to Steam last year too - I wonder what happened to that.
I have AA (via their bundle, it’s not really worth it on its own), and within a few weeks I wasn’t able to find online matches. It also didn’t feel great to play (both on touchscreen and controller), and they never released anything beyond 3-on-3 hockey. I would not recommend.
EA
Because the popularity of each sport depends on the country, whereas video games are a global market.
I guess this makes the development of sport simulations more difficult to make profitable.
NBA street was good until the third one and I can’t explain it, but it just wasn’t nearly as good as the second one. NFL blitz went away from an arcadey feel to a weird gritty prison football simulator. Never played NHL hitz sadly.
IIRC, I played as Mario in the third NBA street. It was an odd fit, but still kinda fun. And, if you ever get a chance at NHL Hitz, it’s easily my favorite sports game.
I’ll have to play it some time!
