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It’s been more than 15 years since the release of the most recent college basketball video game. EA Sports recently announced it’s abandoned its plan to return to that space after getting boxed out by 2K Sports, and fans who were looking forward to a new one will probably be underwhelmed by the latest development.
In 1980, Mattel released the first basketball video game that was officially licensed by the NBA when the creatively titled NBA Basketball came out for its largely forgotten Intellivision console. A number of other developers attempted to leverage the league’s popularity to their advantage before Acclaim did exactly that when NBA Jam dropped in 1993—two years before EA Sports released the first installment of the NBA Live franchise.
The publisher also dropped its first college basketball game that year in the form of Coach K College Basketball, which served as the predecessor to the NCAA March Madness franchise that was eventually rebranded as NCAA Basketball before the final installment came out in 2009.
That game sparked the lawsuit that led to EA Sports abandoning the NCAA Football franchise a few years later, although the company brought it back from the dead last year after the NIL Era allowed for what is now known as the College Football series.
It looked like it was subsequently gearing up to turn its attention back to college basketball, but it sounds like fans are going to have to settle for a half-measure involving the NBA 2K games.
2K Spots will seemingly incorporate college basketball teams into the NBA 2K series instead of making a standalone title
College Football 25 ended up being one of the best-selling video games of 2024, so it was only natural that EA Sports was compelled to explore the possibility of making a college basketball game—a development it hinted was in the works at the end of June.
However, earlier this week, we learned that will not end up being the case after the publisher informed the schools it had been negotiating with that it had decided to pull the plug on the game based on the number of teams that had opted to commit to another project being developed by the folks at 2K Sports, the Take Two subsidiary best known for overseeing the NBA 2K franchise.
On Thursday, the latter decided to take a bit of a victory lap by shedding some light on that project in a post where it teased the upcoming release of “a college basketball experience that will feature more than 100 programs from across the country.”
We’re going back to school. pic.twitter.com/8u1ihv5i3s
— 2K (@2K) September 5, 2025
While that might seem like good news at first glance, it certainly leaves a lot to be desired. The decision to use “experience” instead of “game” all but confirms the project will be integrated into NBA 2K, and while 100 teams might sound like a lot, there are currently more than 360 men’s basketball programs at the Division I level.
It does appear there’s a chance that 2K Sports is testing the waters by using this as a pilot program to see if there’s enough interest to justify the development of an actual college basketball game, but it sure doesn’t seem like it’s a top priority at this point in time.