NBA 2K26

Here are four prices from the same store page, on the same afternoon.

The pass for one of eight seasons costs more than the whole game. Buy the Hall of Fame Pass and both bonus offers for that single season and you have spent NZ$104.85 — over three times what the basketball simulation cost you — on one eighth of a year.

And on 22 July 2026, with Season 8 still running and those passes still for sale, 2K opened pre-purchases for NBA 2K27.

The game underneath is good

I want to be clear about this, because the economics make it easy to be unfair. NBA 2K26 is a seriously accomplished sports game.

Visual Concepts have been iterating on this for over twenty years and the animation is the best in any team sport — footwork, contact, the way a contested layup resolves. The broadcast package is convincing enough to be mistaken for television at a glance. MyCAREER builds a player you're invested in, MyNBA handles the franchise side properly, MyTEAM does cards, and The W covers the WNBA. It is an enormous amount of game.

The reviews agree. English sits at 71.8% positive across 15,527 reviews — Mostly Positive — and the 100 most recent English reviews run 72 positive, from players with a 45-hour median. That is a stable game with a broadly satisfied audience, and it is not in any kind of decline.

Even the critics concede it. "Solid game-play, I enjoy it more then 25," writes a 360-vote negative. "2k26 at its core is fine enough," writes another at 505 votes. "The basketball itself is decent," says a third. That's the same shape I found in The Ascent — negative reviews that open by praising the thing they're about to mark down.

What they mark it down for

Money, at 21 of a hundred negatives, with Virtual Currency named in 14. The complaint isn't that purchases exist; it's that progression is built around them. A 356-vote reviewer, new to the series, describes it precisely: "Every element of this game feels tailor made to waste your time and squeeze you for money. The multiplayer menu is an open world for no reason other than to waterboard you with advertisements. Do your weekly chores at the Gatorade™ Fitness Center…" That is what the social hub is — a space you walk through to reach menus, past sponsors, running errands.

Crashes, at 24 — the single most-cited term. This is a PC-specific problem and it starts at the door: a 336-vote review from launch week describes twelve minutes of shader compilation, a black screen, five minutes of play and a crash, then a refund. Recent reviews still mention it: "Pc crashes, terrible AI," from a 370-hour player days ago.

No cross-platform play, which reviewers say leaves the PC version thin. One 264-vote review advises buying it on console instead "so there'll be a player base beyond 2 weeks." The game peaked at around 52,000 concurrent players on Steam in May 2026.

Defensive AI, at 13. A 697-hour player: "No defense whatsoever, every court in park is infested with meta cheeser squads that use the same animations and same gameplan."

The most-upvoted negative of all, at 884 votes, is a different kind of complaint: a player with 151 hours says they were permanently banned by an automated anti-cheat system while grinding an in-game quest, and that their appeal was rejected without explanation. I can't verify one account's version of a ban, and I'm not going to state what happened. But it's worth knowing that the loudest single criticism of this game is about losing access to it.

The annual problem

This is the third annualised sports game in the library, after EA SPORTS FC 26 and Football Manager 26, both of which scored 5.5. NBA 2K26 scores higher because the underlying simulation is stronger — but it shares their structural trap, in a sharper form.

You are buying a product with a known expiry date. This one's successor is already taking money. Anything you spend on Season 8 buys you a few weeks of relevance in a game whose replacement ships next month, and the passes were priced identically in week one and in week fifty.

The 75% discount is the tell. A game that costs NZ$129.95 in September and NZ$32.48 in August isn't really a NZ$129.95 game; it's a NZ$32.48 game with an eleven-month early-access premium attached.

The verdict

NBA 2K26 earns a 6. The basketball is an 8 and I'd defend that — there is no other serious NBA simulation, and this one is made by people who clearly know the sport.

The score comes down for crashes at the top of the complaint list, no cross-play on PC, an AI that long-time players say doesn't defend, and above all an economy where a single season's pass is priced above the entire game and where the next edition went on sale before this one finished its run.

At NZ$32.48 it's a good buy and I'd recommend it at that price without much hesitation. Buy the game, ignore every pass, and put the NZ$34.95 you didn't spend toward literally anything else.