In what may be a first for 2K Sports and the NBA 2K series the servers are holding up on a release day! NBA 2K16 came out at midnight and not only have the servers been completely stable and online, but the games being played have been practically flawless.

The servers in recent years have been especially critical for NBA 2K because so much of the game is tied into the online connection requirement. If the servers are down, modes in progress such as MyCareer and MyGM can not be played – so it’s not just about online head-to-head or team-up or MyTeam. With past editions there’s been a good week or two post-release where the game was rendered largely unplayable.

While I’ve only played three Play Now Online games they’ve all been great, and reports from many others are of similar experiences. Feedback is good on MyPark as well. Things might be a little more wonky in Pro-Am where one game I played had another team walk on the court in the middle of it, our players all go invisible, and then the game crash to the dashboard.

The biggest concern for online H2H relates to pauses. While there is a three minute clock on being paused, there is apparently no limit to number of pauses. Against the wrong opponent the experience could be made awful because of that.

So far so good though otherwise. All the features in the game can be reached and successfully played. Yes, that’s a low bar to clear, but we’ll take it!