{"id":87573,"date":"2026-08-14T08:14:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T12:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87573"},"modified":"2026-08-14T08:37:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T12:37:20","slug":"2k-games-is-making-a-new-sports-franchise-and-all-signs-point-to-soccer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87573","title":{"rendered":"2K Games Is Making A New Sports Franchise, And All Signs Point To Soccer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2K Games has announced the formation of Small Axe Studios, a new developer that it says will be focused on building a new &#8220;blockbuster&#8221; sports franchise. While the publisher&#8211;which is owned by Take-Two Interactive&#8211;has commented <em>which <\/em>sport will be joining its other franchises, it looks like 2K might be taking on EA&#8217;s annual soccer series, EA Sports FC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Currently, Small Axe Studios includes several former EA developers,\u00a0with Aaron McHardy as studio head. McHardy had previously been in charge of EA&#8217;s FIFA franchise for 15 years, and other notable names include Gary Peterson as Small Axe&#8217;s head of design, Tom Pan as head of operations, technical art director John Cruz, and engineering lead Mike Thompson&#8211;all EA veterans.<\/p>\n<figure data-wp-interactive=\"core\/image\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-ref-id=\"1850020\" data-wp-on--click=\"actions.core.image.showLightbox\" style=\"cursor: zoom-in\" height=\"576\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Small-Axe.jpg?w=636\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1850020\" \/>Small Axe Studios logo <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another clue that 2K Games will be making its own soccer game is the Small Axe logo, which resembles a soccer club badge on a shirt. While EA has dominated the soccer genre on console and PC&#8211;forging its own path forward after it split with FIFA in 2023 and transitioned to EA Sports FC. There hasn&#8217;t been a new AAA FIFA game since then, but the international<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2K Games has announced the formation of Small Axe Studios, a new developer that it says will be focused on building a new &#8220;blockbuster&#8221; sports franchise. While the publisher&#8211;which is owned by Take-Two Interactive&#8211;has commented which sport will be joining its other franchises, it looks like 2K might be taking on EA&#8217;s annual soccer series,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":87575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87576,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87573\/revisions\/87576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}