one thing the lockout, next thing, the game just aint that good compared to 2k11, they made 2 steps forward and 4 steps backwards. i play 2k since 2k3:

-2k3 great
-2k4 great
-2k5 horrible
-2k6 great
-2k7 revolution
-2k8 great
-2k9 good
-2k10 more bad than good
-2k11 revolution
-2k12 dissapointing

Some of my friends who played and loved 2k11 decided not to buy this years game because:

1. You can't play with friends online with any of the Legend teams.

2. Crew mode was removed. No point in playing My Player unless you like playing against the computer.

The ones who did buy it including myself definetly don't play it as much since the online gameplay is just so stripped down this year and gets boring after awhile.

I really miss all the signature moves players had in last years game too.

For 2k13 2k should focus on really improving both the offline and online gameplay and spend less time on all the nonessential things.

there is minor things about 2k12 that makes a bad game compared to 2k11, i like 2k11 better

Yes, could write a lot about this game rubbing me wrong, just a few are; cannot share easily with the new profile issues or whatever, its like i dont have permissions to download teams in 2k share, usb transfers to my friends are no longer allowed, no more cloned player slots remaining errors when i make my own teams and try to provide rosters. Limited jerseys, custom logos same. Player names change, linked with created team coach names, therefore i have a LeBron "Reese" in my league. Cannot change players age. No easy way to fix cap issues when entering association when you have ultimate rosters. Sometimes gets locked into homepage of team in association. Can't play with the same custom rosters to draft from online together....maybe i could, maybe i could do a lot of things, but its just not worth the effort. Still lots of bugs in the video creator, and freezes on exiting that mode. One of the most annoying is the analog directional menus for in game subs/camera/plays etc...2k11's interface was so much better all i wished for was to have a better algorithm for the submenu substitutions about who would be left or right, with consistency (im on ps3) i sometimes wonder what happened ? many small annoying limitations and setbacks, but i still play it and love it, however i will never play in any online tournaments because i cant take playing at 50 game speed. i see it generally as a fail, because i wouldve rather kept my 50 and played last years game, but for the 2k team i think it is a win because i see it as a transitional year, which was probably the best time to have considering the lockout, i think next year will really be the test to see what things they screw us on and what they fix, some revolutionary additions have been focused on as game extensions and expansions, once those get more efficient and cleaned up it will be a better experience, like the ease of connecting and sharing our gaming experience, and changing the game after the release is cool, so i still have hopes

Jordan on the cover again is a good thing! It was the lockout & other factors that caused sales to drop.

Anybody who thinks 2k12 is better than 2k11 is just a 2k apologist. 2k11 was sooooo much fun to play and it was nice to play as Jordan and some of his old bulls teams along with other historical teams but I really could give a **** about the historical teams in this game. As for the game itself, its just too ****ing complex compared to 2k11 which was hard at first but got really fun after a few weeks. I have had 2k12 since the last week of 2011 and I gotta admit unless I move the sliders around in my favor, which is something I have never done before, I cant have any fun with this game.

I agree with alot of the comments that NBA 2K12 is one of the best sports games out and definitely the best basketball game made to date. The real reason it's sales are down are because of the economy and the release of other games like MW3 and BF2 and a lot of people had to make a choice. Another reason is MOST people that I have played with and against online don't have a clue about how to play real basketball, and if you don't know how to play, you tend to think it sucks because you can't do the things that you want to do, like get a triple double every game, or drive baseline to baseline with out passing to a teammate. As the games get more and more realistic, they also require more and more actual basketball knowledge of how the game is REALLY played. Another thing that hurt it was not having fully functioning servers initially and even still not top notch, though you can actually play mic'd 5v5 games pretty regular now. I also think that 2K has always fed off of EA's marketing of Live. EA would spend alot of money to get people in the stores to get Live and some of those people would buy 2K instead, but without that this year, 2K was on their own, marketing wise.

Also, while I don't believe the lockout affected all that many people's decision not to buy the game, I do think sales picked up when it was announced that the season would start after all. That being said, I think there were some people that figured the lockout would prevent the rosters from being updated and that could have caused them to wait to buy and THEN other thing got in the way of picking it up later. But sales or no sale, I do think it's a better game than last years version overall.

Is this the site's professional opinion?

Don't you think that you should focus on the broken gameplay in order to claim that a game has failed? Association is a joke, bugs still here after 3 years, THERE ARE NO DOUBLE TEAMS and many more, yet your arguments of failure is that "Jordan is not... cool anymore?"

Dear lord. No wonder 2K doesn't give a **** for its audience, when its public image doesn't get a beating from the people with a voice.

3 real reasons why 2K12 failed:

1) They ____ed on their core fans
2) They tried to crossover to be mainstream, but still thinking like a small market game developer - so they didn't get as many mainstream sales as they tried to (did anybody buy their DLC? lol)
3) They broke things from 2K11 that weren't broken for the sake of making a better game

What makes it even more pathetic is that there was no competition this year. All they had to do was release a 2K11 2.0 with new rosters.

Unfortunately there's no going back. The CEO's and board of directors aren't going to accept 2K as it used to be catering to hardcore gamers. They want EA type sales, and tried to be EA but fell flat on their face. Just like you still see people on your friends list playing NFL 2K5 - a few years from now, you're going to still see people playing NBA 2K11.