2K Sports
 | |
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry |
Computer and video games Interactive entertainment |
| Founded | January 25, 2005 |
| Headquarters | Novato, California, U.S. |
Key people | Greg Thomas (President), David Ismailer (Chief Operating Officer) |
| Products | Video games |
| Parent | Take-Two Interactive |
| Website | Official website |
2K Sports, Inc. is a division of 2K Games that develops and publishes sports video games. It comprises a single development studio, Visual Concepts, which was purchased from Sega in 2005 after Sega Sports shut down. 2K Sports mainly develops and publishes American sports video games; such as NBA 2K series, the NHL 2K series and the WWE 2K series.[1] It previously produced the MLB 2K series.
History
In January 2005, Take-Two Interactive acquired all of the outstanding capital stock of Visual Concepts and its wholly owned subsidiary, Kush Games, the developers of some of the company's sports titles, and certain intellectual property rights associated with these products from Sega for $24 million USD.[2]
2K Sports, which in late 2004 purchased development studio Indie Built from Microsoft Game Studios,[3] closed down the Indie Built studio in April 2006. Indie Built was known for its work on the Amped, Links, and Top Spin series. However, 2K Sports still owns the rights to these intellectual properties. 2K Sports has the exclusive third-party rights to produce Major League Baseball and World Poker Tour games.[4]
On October 20, 2008, 2K Sports released their first PC game, NBA 2K9. Their second, MLB Front Office Manager, was released on January 26, 2009. On January 23, 2013, 2K Sports bought the WWE game license from THQ.[5]
The MLB 2K series was discontinued on January 6, 2014 due to the poor reception of MLB 2K13, which was criticized for being almost exactly the same as MLB 2K12.[6] However, this move was met with frustration from baseball fans as well as Xbox 360 owners, who were left without an MLB title.[7]
List of video games
Studios
Current
- Visual Concepts
- Visual Concepts China
- Visual Concepts Korea
Former
- Indie Built (closed in 2006)
- Kush Games (closed in 2008)
- PAM Development (closed in 2008)
- Venom Games (closed in 2008)
References
- ↑ Goldfarb, Andrew (February 13, 2013). "TAKE-TWO CONFIRMS WWE PUBLISHING DEAL". IGN.
- ↑ "Buy! Buy! Buy Acquired by Take-Two". April 2005.
- ↑ Curt Feldman (2004-12-06). "Take-Two helps Microsoft get out of sports game". GameSpot. Retrieved 2015-02-18.
- ↑ Christopher Grant (2006-05-03). "Take-Two shutters Indie Built dev studio". Joystiq. Retrieved 2015-02-18.
- ↑ "WWE Video Game License to be Acquired by Take-Two". IGN. January 23, 2013. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
- ↑ Samit Sarkar (January 6, 2014). "2K Sports pulls MLB 2K games offline, not renewing series for 2014 (update)". Polygon. Retrieved March 10, 2015.
- ↑ "2K Sports Scrubs Any Sign of Connection to MLB From Existence". January 6, 2014. Retrieved March 10, 2015.