Several ex-EA developers, including former Visceral Games GM Scott Probst, have founded a new studio to create a spiritual successor to NBA Street, the popular three-on-three street basketball series released in the early 2000s.
The new project, developed by Play by Play Studios, is titled The Run: Got Next and is a “character-driven, full-court 3v3 basketball game that celebrates the attitude, style, and skill of streetball culture” developed in Unreal Engine 5, where players can build winning streaks solo or against friends online (it’s “under discussion” whether a full offline mode will be included). BaratoroPlayers will be able to visit the shop between games to acquire “items, sponsors, abilities, kicks and more.”
On-court gameplay will focus on unique characters with different strengths, weaknesses and playstyles, and the trailer showcases some of the initial characters, including the Spin Cycle, High Wire and the powerful Zamboni, who can perform powerful dunks and other moves.
In an interview with IGN, co-founder and former Madden creative director Mike Young said the team’s goal was to “make defense as fun as offense,” a feat that’s difficult to achieve in sports games.
“The stars feel like stars. If you go back to the old-school games like Nintendo ice hockey, you had small, medium and big characters and they had clearly defined abilities. Characters had overwhelming strengths and clear weaknesses, which made building lineups for a three-on-three game a lot more interesting,” Young says.
“Do you want a lineup that’s fast, but weak and gets checked? Or do you want a lineup that’s slow, but strong, that can shoot and get checked?… You have a Hall of Famer like Shaquille O’Neal, who in real life had great handles. But in our game, he couldn’t do those tier-two or tier-three trick moves. He’d fall down and lose the ball… So we want to bring that to reality. The way the characters move. They’re all unique. They have special moves.”
When asked if The Run: Got Next will feature microtransactions, Probst told IGN that while cosmetic items may be added at a later date, The Run is not free to play and there are currently no plans for microtransactions that directly affect gameplay. As for online play, a Play by Play Studios representative confirmed that the game will have cross-play and cross-progression, but no couch co-op at launch.
“Right now, we’re focused on getting online working properly for launch,” a rep told IGN. “As with everything else about the game, we’ll listen to feedback and interest and go from there.”
The Run: Got Next aims to fill the void left by arcade sports games like NBA Street, NFL Street and FIFA Street, which were either relegated to basic modes for bigger licensed titles like EA Sports FC’s Volta or dropped entirely. Notably, The Run: Got Next has a direct connection to the original NBA Street, with Young serving as an associate texture artist on NBA Street Vol. 2.
“A lot of us who worked on NBA Street have always wanted to bring the game back. I think it’s hard when you have a company that has hugely popular games like Madden and NBA Live. If you’re putting all your resources into that, I think it would be hard to think about a secondary game,” Young said.
“I was there when Tiburon Studios reopened. [NFL Blitz]Some of the games we’ve seen in the past were just for nostalgia and didn’t evolve as modern games. I don’t think they have staying power, so they need to be released at a lower price. They’ll only attract people who like them, and then maybe they’ll only play them on weekends or for a few weeks, or maybe they’ll just release them occasionally…”
“The opportunity we see is to bring a type of gaming to Gen Z that doesn’t exist anymore: social gaming. Playing with friends, playing against friends. We’re trying to bring in things that simulation games don’t offer: one-off modes like Superstar KO. We want to make the best version of that.”
A different kind of sports game
In his letter introducing Play by Play Studios, Probst similarly criticized the current sports gaming industry, which is dominated by simulation games like NBA 2K and the recently released College Football 25 .
“As the years have gone by, the gaming industry has grown exponentially, and often times, business has come to take priority over the enjoyment of a particular experience. This is awful,” he writes. “I’ve experienced this myself with a lot of today’s sports games – you feel like you have to put in hundreds of hours of effort to get good at it, you have to pay hundreds of dollars to get a decent amount of time in it (on top of the $70 you already paid for the game itself), and then you have to go on random quests to do things that have absolutely nothing to do with the enjoyment of the game or the sport.”
To that end, he says, The Run “doubles the fun” without the need to worry about “overly complicated menus, GM modes, roster micromanagement, pack openings, and broadcast-like gameplay.”
“We’re taking inspiration from games like Rocket League, where you can get into the game in five seconds. They’re amazing,” Probst said. “They’re really about the action and the game itself. So the longer answer is, that’s what we want to do. We want you to be immersed in the game. We want you to enjoy the sport of basketball, and we want to bring back the atmosphere, the personality, the character and do that in a really meaningful, memorable, unique way.”
Ultimately, The Run’s biggest challenge is its lack of real-life players; unlicensed sports games have had a dismal track record over the past decade, and Probst acknowledges that there have been “conversations” about the importance of licenses, but that ultimately the focus is on making “a really, really fun basketball game.”
“We want to create a structure and a framework that allows us to bring in real-world people — athletes, celebrities, influencers,” Probst said, “but first and foremost, our focus is on the game we’re making and bringing these characters to life.”
We’ll find out if The Run: Got Next can usher in a new era of arcade sports gaming when it launches in 2025. It’s currently in development for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director and co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? DM @the_katbot!
