The NBA Live development team runs a weekly game of basketball at a rec centre across the street from EA Sports’ studio in Orlando, Florida. When I visited a couple of weeks ago, I was invited to join them. Absolutely, I replied, but deep down I was still a little hesitant.
By the end of October 2010, everyone knew NBA Elite 11 was doomed. Though officially “delayed” that September, one week before the game was due to release, no one really expected it ever to ship, even internally. The ambitious makeover of the NBA Live franchise simply had too many problems to be published. That last Friday of the month, word spread from EA Sports’ operations in California and Canada to Florida. NBA Elite would be canceled outright.
At the time I asked about its readiness, EA Sports’ next NBA game didn’t even have a name. Peter Moore, then the label’s boss, avoided my question and told me was doing so. “It’s in the shape you would expect it to be for a title that’s a year and four months away,” Moore said at E3 last June. “There’s a non-answer for you!”
Kyrie Irving, the NBA’s No. 1 overall draft pick for 2011, appears to have outed EA Sports’ intention to return to the NBA Live name when it publishes a simulation basketball title this fall for the first time in three years.
All my friend wanted was a simple, get-rid-of-it-on-Craigslist estimate for an original Xbox, two controllers, and about a dozen games. He knew that what he had was too common in its time, too obsolete in the present, to qualify as some latter-day Antiques Roadshow jackpot. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to appraise it at $US25. At that price, I could see him leaving it by the curb, sitting sadly on an old chair with a “FREE” sign, to be claimed by scavengers or the garbage man.
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As tipped last week by a preorder bonus on GameStop’s site, the “Become Legendary” mode for NBA Elite 11 is indeed the game’s single-player career, the first for the series. This video gives a taste of what to expect.
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NBA Live renamed itself NBA Elite, brought in the producer of the widely acclaimed NHL series, and set about fixing two huge gameplay gripes – unfathomably random shooting, and losing control once you entered a two-player animation.
ESPN’s booth trio of (from left) Mark Jackson, Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Breen will be the new voice talent for NBA Elite 11, according to a by-the-way mention at the bottom of an AP story on the broadcast team today.
