Visual Concepts has always been eager to explore gameplay off the court in its basketball sims, but we’ve never seen anything quite like this. It’s announced Gravity Ball for NBA 2K25, an all-new, premium piece of paid DLC that adds an all-new online multiplayer game to the title. It’s been developed by the same team behind LEGO 2K Drive.
“Entering an arena-like dome, players will compete in 3v3 or 5v5 formats and try to outscore their opposing squad by taking aim at a series of numbered targets,” the press release reads. “Working with teammates to maintain possession, players will weave their way through the defense, and utilise Power-Ups to outscore the rival squad in this madcap game. Featuring a multi-tiered court and four different Power Ups, Gravity Ball is pure off-the-walls mayhem.”
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The mode will cost $7.99 when it releases on 18th October, but it’ll only be accessible within The City, which is NBA 2K25’s social hub on PS5 only (last-gen consoles have a different sandbox). There’s already a go-karting minigame in the core release, but we’ve never seen it try anything quite like this.
In a blog post, president Greg James described the addition as a “mashup of American-Gladiators-meets-futuristic-basketball-meets-paintball”. He continued: “Every game studio, big and small, likes to try new things and bring new fun to players. Good concepts deserve a chance to find an audience and shouldn’t die on the cutting room floor. We hope you enjoy this game as much as we do and look forward to your feedback.”
It does sound like this is an experiment, then, and perhaps a test bed to see if future NBA 2K titles could potentially play host to different experiences. This seems to be the way all games are going at the moment, as booting up Fortnite these days introduces you to an unfathomable list of different activities, from tycoon games to obstacle courses.
Perhaps games are getting too ambitious to just do one thing now.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 11
My first thought was that’s kinda cool, I enjoyed things like the futsal mode in the old FIFA games and Rush is pretty great this year. But it costs extra and the game’s like £70 for casino mechanics. I dunno, I’m pretty sure they make enough money from VC to subsidise the development of this? It also is just blatantly a different game, like it’s not even just a different mode or anything.
Yeah I think it looks cool but I'm not really sure who's going to buy and play it. And it appears to be online-only so...
Why didn't they just make this a separate release on digital platforms?
Fair idea I guess besides the state of sports games design these days I see on occasion.
Also different hub/sandboxes on old gen what is this Simpson game without a hub on PSP/DS or something.
Not parity between consoles, WHAT THAT'S UNHEARD OF IN THIS ERA, everything has to have parity or the customers complain.
@get2sammyb “mashup of American-Gladiators-meets-futuristic-basketball-meets-paintball”
That’s a lot of words to say “Blitzball”. 😂
That's a $10 arcade game purchase in a heartbeat for me and my buddies. That is nowhere close to a "full price game purchase + DLC add-on" purchase.
Seems supremely dumb to design something like that and then willingly kneecap its potential market/playerbase.
Finally they started to focus more on the realism and simulation part of NBA
Destruction all stars without the cars anyone? We all know how well that went...
Seriously it's actually quite difficult to judge what to buy these days as things are becoming so over saturated with free then paid for, paid for then pay some more, increased charges for base game - anyone would think it's a multi billion pound industry trying to work out the way to make the next billion... Oh wait....
Simple thing - let's not buy into this stuff. Let it all fail and then hopefully we will be left with the companies that choose to provide whole games on release and not these cheap sloppy add-ons that only cheapen the original mega purchase of £80
I hope NBA Superstars makes it's way to PS5, 2K sucks ass
The (ahem) platform-ification of games (sorry) continues. Thanks Fortnite and others.
But it is an interesting, and worrying, situation when they believe this stands a better shot of success as DLC to a popular annual game than it is as a standalone title. Sadly they are probably right.
Maybe they could spend a little time making the wnba players look more like actual human beings instead of working on stuff like this. A guy can dream anyway.
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