The resources are redirected to be used for the NBA game

Jan 7, 2014 09:36 GMT  ·  By

Publisher 2K Sports announces that it is no longer actively developing the MLB 2K14 video game and that all marketing and promotional materials associated with the series have been withdrawn from developer Visual Concepts.

Polygon quotes a statement from the company as saying that, “We have decided not to renew our MLB 2K series for 2014.”

2K Sports adds, “We are very proud of the achievements made by the MLB 2K team and look forward to their contributions to our future titles, including NBA 2K — our industry’s #1 rated and #1 selling basketball franchise.”

Visual Concepts handles both the big sports franchises for 2K and it will be interesting to see how the extra manpower and resources increase the quality of the new game in the basketball series, which will be launched in the fall on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and current-gen consoles.

NBA 2K14 has been a solid success for the publisher and the series is currently selling much better than the rival NBA Live from EA Sports.

MLB 2K has never been as successful and failed to generate major sales despite the fact that 2K ran a number of promotions where it offered 1 million dollars (760,000 Euro) to the first gamer who managed to get a perfect game.

Despite the competition, the game failed to attract players because its core mechanics remained largely unchanged over the previous version and features were eliminated because the team lacked the time to update them.

The cancelations of MLB 2K14 means that the only baseball simulation in the AAA category that will be launched this year is MLB The Show from Sony, which is only set to arrive on PlayStation platforms.

The sport is important in the United States and some gamers might consider the exclusivity a good reason to abandon the Xbox One from Microsoft.