During the past couple of console generations, several companies have tried to take a run at the juggernaut that is EA Sports and, for various reasons, each has failed to knock off the big dog. Whether it was Sony's 989 Sports brand, Microsoft's XSN Sports or many of the smaller players in the market, nobody has had the right combination of development talent, deep pockets, effective marketing and good fortune to usurp EA.

The lone brand to enjoy any lasting success against EA shadow has been the 2K Sports brand. From its debut on the Sega Dreamcast through its expansion to multiple platforms last generation to its current status as EA's chief rival, 2K Sports has proven itself to be a brand with some legs.

But as it celebrates its 10th anniversary, the outlook for 2K Sports is far from rosy. It has been pushed out of the football market; Take-Two buyout talks are potentially looming once again; 2K's baseball game appears to be stuck in neutral; its hockey game has been caught and surpassed by EA's offering (and may now be canceled); and its basketball game, while still the best on the market, does not dominate NBA Live in the quality department by as much as it used to.

So where does the brand go from here? Well, here are five tips that can possibly help 2K survive.

While I loathe to suggest anything that would lead to less competition, 2K needs to focus its efforts on the areas where it has the best opportunity to succeed (at least in the short term). In my opinion, that means basketball and baseball -- basketball because NBA 2K10 is the strongest hoops game on the market and baseball because the company has got the 360 market all to itself until 2012. Unfortunately, that means putting the NHL 2K series on the shelf for at least a year. But given the current strength of EA's NHL series, dumping money into NHL 2K seems like a bit of a lost cause at this point -- and I am actually a fan of the 2K hockey series, so it is not without some hesitation that I suggest putting it on hiatus.

But the bottom line is that 2K would be best served by putting its top developers to work on the NBA 2K and MLB 2K series. This might push NBA 2K to staggering new heights and help make MLB 2K into a game worthy of the exclusive license.

Which leads me to...

2. Make better use of the MLB license

The exclusive MLB license 2K acquired back in 2005 needs to be put to better use. In the past two years, 2K has released no fewer than nine different games using the MLB license (MLB 2K8 & 2K9, MLB 2K8 & 2K9 Fantasy All-Stars, MLB Power Pros 2008, MLB Stickball, MLB Superstars, MLB Front Office Manager and The Bigs 2). Here are the Metacritic scores for those games:

MLB 2K8 (360): 70
MLB 2K9 (360): 64
MLB 2K8 Fantasy All-Stars (DS): 59
MLB 2K9 Fantasy All-Stars (DS): No Metacritic score, but it reviewed terribly.
MLB Front Office Manager (360): 47
MLB Stickball (XBLA): 46
MLB Power Pros 2008 (Wii): 79
MLB Superstars (Wii): No Metacritic score, but it reviewed terribly.
The Bigs 2 (360): 79

With the exceptions of Power Pros and The Bigs 2, those scores range from middling to awful. Among the hardcore crowd here at OS, the results are not much better -- only Power Pros and The Bigs 2 earned anything higher than a 7 in OS reviews (9 and 8.5, respectively).

Worse yet, the flagship game of the bunch has completely failed to take advantage of the exclusivity it enjoys as many Xbox 360 gamers opt to go without any sim baseball title at all rather than play 2K's offerings. In fact, it's not unusual to read anecdotal stories on OS about people buying Playstation 3 consoles for the sole purpose of playing SCE San Diego's The Show

The folks at 2K would be wise to decide what approach they want to take with baseball (sim, arcade, some sort of Power Pros hybrid) and devote the majority of their time and resources to that effort.

3. Revisit football

While it was neither a critical nor a commercial success, All-Pro Football 2K8 was a good game -- just look at the dedicated following it retains even to this day. The trouble is, the game never reached nearly the number of gamers it needed to in order to justify a sequel.

But football is the sport you need in your portfolio if you are going to succeed in the long run as a sports game publisher in the U.S. My suggestion? Take the core of APF 2K8, dump the legends and their licensing fees, keep the fictional league aspect and add in an online franchise mode. In addition, make the create-a-player feature well rounded, incorporate full trading and stat-tracking, then make it so gamers can track all this from their 360/PS3 or the Internet and link in things like Facebook and Twitter in any way you can. From there, offer the whole package for as cheap as possible on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network. In other words, make this your loss leader. Get your football engine in the hands of as many people as possible. If enough of them try it, enough of them are bound to like it.

4. Forget the PSP, embrace the iPhone market.

As much as it pains me to say it, 2K needs to give up on making $40 versions of their games for the PSP and go after the new portable-gaming market. For the past four years, the company has released the MLB 2K series on the PSP, with each iteration receiving little more than a lukewarm response. This year, NBA 2K on PSP got a similar response. Frankly, this is not surprising. For whatever reason, most games do not sell on the PSP.

So, rather than trying to cram a console game onto a handheld system, why not port your games to the iPhone and reach a wider audience? 2K Games seems to understand this -- it recently gave gamers an excellent version of Civilization Revolution for the iPhone. Why not do the same for some of the sports titles? If you're going to make MLB Front Office Manager, make it an iPhone game. And, while you're at it, give us a real MLB-licensed version of Power Pros for the iPhone instead of the half-baked version we've been handed so far.

5. Strike a deal to bring PES into the fold

First off, I admit that this one would be hard to pull off because Pro Evolution is a cash cow for Konami, but Power Pros set the precedent for 2K publishing Konami games in North America, so why not extend that partnership to the Pro Evolution Soccer series? Only a few short years ago, PES was considered the premier soccer title in a category that sells millions upon millions of games each year. It's not unrealistic to think that, with a little work, PES could once again be a contender to FIFA's throne. If 2K could work out an arrangement with Konami, then having a top-tier soccer game in its stable to complement its basketball and baseball products would go a long way towards fortifying the 2K brand.