2k sports was founded in January 25th, 2005. The name initially comes from Visual Concepts who changed their name to 2K in 2005 when they were acquired by Take-2 Interactive. The 2K name originates from the 2k sports series in 2009. Visual Concepts was a subsidiary of Sega who initially called the NBA series the NBA 2K series. When they were acquired in 2005, Visual Concepts changed their name to 2K. Their most successful games to date are Borderlands 2 which is current the highest selling 2K game to date. Their other successes come from Bioshock, the NBA 2K series, and the Civilization series.
The secret is sequels. Sure, every game studio rides off sequels and uses that to create a product that never fails. The difference with 2K is that their solutions don’t fail. Games may become outdated and overplayed, but 2K finds a working solution and tweaks it to release a new game every year. For example, the NBA 2K series dates back to 1999 and continues to be the highest selling basketball series in history. The mechanics never change with the game, but are constantly tweaked to be better than the last. The secret sauce is for this is that the NBA won’t suddenly lose fans. Every year, fans anticipate a new NBA 2K video game.
EA overall is a more successful game studio than 2K, but this is much like the article we read a couple weeks ago about the ‘Frightful Five’. Companies much larger than Uber and AirBnB like Amazon and Google are going to dominate technology but Amazon and Google aren’t going to try to get into the hospitality or business. NBA Live 14 only sold 15,000 copies worldwide while 2k14 sold 7 million.