2K discusses their lack of sports titles in Europe, importance of new I.P.

The following comments come from Christoph Hartmann, 2K Games…

On the lack of 2K sports games in Europe…

“I think you have to look at sports in general. North America is a much bigger market, the society is obsessed about sports, and there are three monster-big sports. In Europe it is all soccer. Every country has a little bit of this and that, Germany used to love Formula 1, but when Schumacher left that went away. Some countries are into tennis. But it is all soccer. There are already great games in this field out there. If someone has a good idea to give a new angle to soccer games that no one has thought of, and we think adds a lot of value, then hey, we’ll sign it up. For me it is not about establishing 2K Sports in Europe, we just want to make great sports games. It is driven by the content. If there is a great opportunity in Europe then we will go after it. By the way, the numbers for our NBA game in Europe went up a lot. Based on that data, I think it went beyond the die-hard NBA fan and actually appealed to sports gamers looking for something different.”

On new IP…

“Our studios don’t want to do the same things all the time. I have seen so many franchises die because of poor quality or creativity running out. Not everything is meant to go on forever. You have to push yourself and build new things, there’s no way around it. My vision for 2K is to be the Miramax of the early days, when you had all these great movies that won Oscars but were also commercially really successful. That’s what we want to do.