Yesterday IGNCube ran a story confirming that this is indeed what has taken place. For whatever reason, relations with Nintendo have changed and the company is no longer a second-party.

It is possible that Left Field was still active shortly after Courtside was released, helping tweak the game for its upcoming release in Europe & Japan. According to IGN’s sources, following completion of Courtside 2002, a large portion of the team at Left Field quit and went to work for Sega / Visual Concepts. These former team members are now allegedly helping develop the GameCube port of NCAA College Basketball. The remainder of Left Field is now working on a series of Backyard Sports kid games for the Humongous / Infogrames label which will appear on next-generation consoles.

A sad sad story...