What company do you think should Develope the next NBA LIVE

[J@3]

Just because Konami make a great football game isn't a guarantee that they'd do the same with an NBA game.

[beau_boy04]

How about Microsoft ? they will at this pace hehehe

[Fiddy Mcs Unit]

how bout capcom haha..they make goof action.

[BlueTooth]

How about Namco, the did a great job with Soul Calibur and Tekken 5, lol

[BlueTooth]

How about Microsoft ? they will at this pace hehehe

Likewise, they already developed an NBA game, Inside drive 2000 for PC and Indside Drive 2002-2004 for Xbox. Their NBA video games had a mediocre to good reviews.

[Bang]

Just because Konami make a great football game isn't a guarantee that they'd do the same with an NBA game.

Well their physics engine is a good start...but true. (The ball movement, the momentum shifts, and jumping height can all be sort of applied to NBA...)

[Rokas[LTU]]

How about Microsoft ? they will at this pace hehehe

Likewise, they already developed an NBA game, Inside drive 2000 for PC and Indside Drive 2002-2004 for Xbox. Their NBA video games had a mediocre to good reviews.

I liked Inside Drive 2000...

[Malfa]

I'm gonna go with the game that IS going to develope it next..Ea Canada.

[Jona]

tiburon from Madden should

That would be awesome.

[Cloudy]

EA Canada! Look what they did with the Next-gen version... It's awesome...
Even with so little previews.

[Pure]

The people that made MVP baseball is out of jobs right? why not add them to the production team for Live.

[carsley]

add me to the production team!!! i would fire the whole f*cking staff

[hipn]

Seems like EA Canada is making NBA games with some bugs on purpose so they can fix it on the nba live after that. i mean, tnba live 2005 was an improved version (well not exactly, but graphics wise and animation wise), but they basically left gameplay the same, and now in 06 they are fixing the gameplay, and enhancing the graphics because its the last live on the current gen consoles and the last live with these graphics until they start using x360 graphics on PC.

[Andrew]

I'm not quite sure of the point you're trying to make in this thread. The only company that can produce NBA Live is Electronic Arts/EA Sports; NBA Live is a copyrighted name, the only way another company will produce NBA Live is if EA sells them the rights. Of course, any other company that acquires an NBA license could produce their own NBA sim, but it won't be called NBA Live; it'll be an alternative game because NBA Live is EA's copyrighted franchise.

[hipn]

No, Im saying if EA Canada Sold it to Konami (or maybe Tiburon), which company should buy it, name it NBA Live 07 and yeah so on...

[Andrew]

If Tiburon took over production money wouldn't have to exchange hands since it's still within the same parent company. Personally I think EA Canada should continue to produce the game, there's no point in another company buying the name when they can make their own NBA franchise.

[End Boss]

The mistake that a lot of you are making when you're saying things like "konami/the madden team should make the next NBA Live" is that the talent of a development team has the most profound impact on the quality of the game.

Virtually every gamer I've ever known has been a backseat game developer. Nearly everyone has an opinion on where games go wrong and how they could be made better. It seems like year after year games developers make the same mistakes or minimal improvements, to the point where a lot of people lose confidence in certain game developers or think they or someone else could do a better job. The thing is though that the talent of any given development team will always bow to the conditions under which a game is developed.

Whether it's improved, the same, or worse EA Canada has to release NBA Live at roughly the same time each year. That's a requirement of them, the developer, placed on them by EA, the publisher. The first thing that EA Canada has to worry about is making the game look different. Even though the more hardcore fans may know that the gameplay is what determines the overall enjoyment, they have to ensure they meet the (ridiculous) expectations of the wider market that no 2 games look alike, because unfortunately graphics are still the major driver of sales in the industry. So that takes time, then they have to devote development time to either concurrent development of multiple versions or porting to other platforms, and some of those versions will need to be run on substantially different systems with different graphical expectations. Then they have to ensure that they keep up with the competition and the content they're offering, so they can have the little ticks on the back of the box. With the time remaining they get to add the token revolutionary feature that sets it apart from last year, and then the game has to be tested and ready to go gold. And then they do it all again.

A lot of what I've mentioned above would've been direct expectations imposed on them by EA, the publisher. They've been in the sports game business for years they know exactly what determines sales, and they make sure that every game development team does exactly what's needed. No more. No less. If you're a lucky EA Sports development team then your franchise is popular (mostly because the demographics of the sport your developing for translates well to the games business). You'll get more money for development, you'll get more staff, you'll get better games, you'll get madden. If you're unlucky, you'll get Cricket 2004, a game made on such a shoe string budget that if this travesty of a title sells anything close to a hundred thousand units you'll turn a profit. NBA Live obviously sits somewhere between the 2.

Great Ideas/new features require man hours to implement. Most of those great ideas/new features will get canned by management, the rest just won't be feasible given the strict time constraints. 1 or 2 of those great ideas/new features will be lucky enough to be the annual token revolutionary improvement that makes the game appear worth buying. The reason madden gets to have more annual token revolutionary improvements is that it can afford more man hours per week. There's your gaping chasm between EA Canada and the Madden team/Konami.

It's easy to sit back year after year and say why hasn't this been changed, why won't you implement such and such feature, and to think that EA Canada is somehow stupid because they haven't made the bleeding obvious improvements that you're aching for as I have done many times before. But the harsh truth is a lot sadder. EA Canada is probably the richest source of innovative ideas for basketball games in the world, afterall they've been making basketball games for 10 years. To imagine that they're just not creative enough is ignorance, that avoids the real truth:

The games business is a god forsaken industry where game developers are exploited for their passion, denied rights to their own Intellectual Property, and slaves to a handful of money grubbing publishers who will sooner gut them that allow them to realise their creative potential.

[Null17]

All hail End Boss

You make a good point. great post.

I wouldn't hand it to another company at this point especially to someone who doesn't have a track record of making good basketball games.

[Andrew]

Great post indeed End Boss.

[Cloudy]

Ahoy! My graphics teacher...
I think that's the first long post I've read on NLSC