For more than a quarter of a century, NBA 2K has been the measure of basketball on consoles and PC. It is an annual simulation series built by Visual Concepts in Novato, California, and the best-selling NBA video game series ever made, with more than 90 million units sold worldwide as of December 2018. It began in November 1999 on the Sega Dreamcast, with Allen Iverson on the cover of the first game and Sega Sports publishing the first six entries. Those early years set the template the series still follows. NBA 2K1 paired street basketball with franchise management, so players got the pickup-game swagger of the blacktop alongside the long-view decisions of running an organization. In 2005 Take-Two Interactive bought Visual Concepts from Sega and created the 2K Sports label, and NBA 2K6 became the first entry published under it. The studio that built the series stayed at its heart through the change, and the franchise is published today by 2K.
NBA 2K went from a strong sports sim to a fixture because it built modes around the player rather than just the league. NBA 2K10 introduced MyPLAYER, the career mode that grew into MyCAREER, where you create a player and shape their path through the pros. NBA 2K11 put Michael Jordan front and center with a mode recreating his achievements. NBA 2K13 introduced MyTEAM, where you assemble a team of players and take it online against other players' teams. NBA 2K14 was the first next-generation console entry and the best-selling one, with over 7 million copies. NBA 2K16 was the fastest-selling at launch, shipping over four million copies in its first week, and its MyCAREER story, "Livin' Da Dream," was written and directed by Spike Lee. The women's game followed: NBA 2K20 was the first to include all 12 WNBA teams, and NBA 2K21 added The W, a dedicated WNBA career mode. The series also underpins the NBA 2K League, an esports league the NBA announced with Take-Two in February 2017 and launched in 2018. It has drawn criticism along the way, including technical issues with its online components, the introduction of microtransactions through Virtual Currency and some of its more story-focused MyCAREER incarnations. Online services for older entries are also retired over time. NBA 2K16's servers stopped operating on December 31, 2017, so its online play is no longer available. As the series continues through NBA 2K27, NBA 2K16 and NBA 2K21 stand out as two distinctive chapters: one carries Spike Lee's career story, and the other marks the arrival of The W.
