NFL 2K is an American football video game series developed by Visual Concepts and published by Sega. The series was originally exclusive to Sega's Dreamcast video game console due to the absence of EA Sports's Madden NFL series on the system. As the foremost "2K" title, it marked the beginning of a running athletics series that eventually led to the spinning off of 2K's sports publishing business under the name of 2K Sports. Upon the Dreamcast's discontinuation, the series continued to be published for other sixth generation game systems and became the chief competitor of the Madden series.