Player feedback drives NBA 2K25 development

NBA 2K25 is coming to PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and PC tomorrow, and it’s already garnering a lot of attention. Newzoo’s Pulse, a market research monitor that charts the play and streaming activity of games from SBJ’s sister company, has NBA2K25 as its highest-rated game today (thanks to streamers streaming on Twitch). NBA 2K24 has become a mainstay of the tracking company Circana’s top 10 games by monthly players.

The challenge NBA 2K25 faced at launch is one that all annual sports franchises face: how to best market to players. Yes, you have a huge built-in audience, but every year players pull away from the game for a variety of reasons, including having less time, being stuck with an older iteration, being more focused on other entertainment options, or simply being too disgruntled with aspects of the series that they didn’t like.

This was the latest case that Zak Armitage, General Manager of NBA 2K at 2K Sports, told me about earlier this week.

“This year in particular is a great example of how we’ve aligned ourselves with the community and how we’ve worked with and from the community,” Armitage said. “NBA 2K25 is a love letter to the core player base, to everyone who’s given feedback over the years of NBA 2K. A lot of what you’ll see in NBA 2K25 comes from that player feedback.”

Community effort

Part of that marketing effort is holding community days to show off 2K25 to players — Armitage said these are bigger than ever, including an event at the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame with more than 100 content creators and a crowd of fans. Armitage said that as 2K Sports has improved how it incorporates community feedback, it’s “leaned in” to people who do live streams and videos. The idea is that they hear what the community wants in their chats and comments almost every day, so they’re in a good position to provide feedback.

This feedback includes even the smallest details, like making it easier to navigate The City, a vast area that offers players different ways to play and interact with the game. It’s loaded with customization options and it’s huge — too big for a subset of the community.

“The city is denser. It’s easier to navigate this year, it’s much quicker to switch between modes,” Armitage said. “There’s less hustle and bustle and more ‘running back.'”

Visual Concepts, the long-term development home of 2K Sports’ many sports games, has added the Proving Grounds area to The City, a ranked mode where players can compete for bragging rights. This comes directly from player feedback.

Another mode, MyPark, brings back the old courts that players have long requested as a nod to “old-school nostalgia” for games like NBA 2K15. The Auction House returns to My Team, and Visual Concepts continues to make adjustments to MyGM and MyNBA modes, like adding the Steph Era, where players can relive or change the career of Warriors PG Stephen Curry.

Long known for its graphical prowess, Visual Concepts has added 9,000 animations that are more fully realized on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S this year, making player movements more fluid and developing a new dribbling engine in its quest to deliver a 1v1 experience with the NBA.

“We have a lot of quality of life improvements and other little things that improve the day-to-day experience for players,” Armitage said.