NBA 2K23 was finally announced by 2K Games this past week, but unfortunately, it was also confirmed that the annualized basketball sim is going to feature a major drawback that was seen in both NBA 2K22 and NBA 2K21. Since the franchise made the jump to next-gen platforms back with NBA 2K21, the PC version of the game has been the same as the last-gen versions that appear on older platforms. Despite the fact that a number of gaming computers would be able to run the next-gen version of NBA 2K, the developers at Visual Concepts have continued to port the lesser version of the game to PC. And sadly, this is a trend that will be continuing again here with NBA 2K23.
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Outlined on the NBA 2K website, it was explained that the next-gen versions of NBA 2K23 that will be seen on PS5 and Xbox Series X will not be ported to PC. As such, those who play the franchise on PC will once again be left with the “worse” version that is seen on PS4 and Xbox One. 2K ended up providing an explanation for why this is going to be the case, but its reasoning didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
“This is something the team is passionate about and will continue to investigate what is possible for the franchise in the future,” 2K said of this decision. “For now, the focus was on assuring NBA 2K23 was optimized for the new consoles (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S), while also making sure the experience remains fresh and innovative for players on other platforms.”
In short, the main reason why 2K Games likely hasn’t prioritized the experience of NBA 2K23 on PC is because the series doesn’t sell as well on this platform. Even though NBA 2K definitely has a PC community, the franchise as a whole has always found drastically more success on consoles. As such, it’s quite feasible that Visual Concepts and 2K simply aren’t dedicating the time and resources needed to improve the game on this platform. Hopefully, this won’t be true for another year by the time that NBA 2K24 arrives.
NBA 2K23 is poised to launch later this year on September 9th and will come to PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
[H/T IGN]
