i personally think that one area where 2k games totally beats the shit out of live is the online mode.....in 2005 Live had no sign of an online league or at least not on ps2.......theres was no protection against game droppers and quiters except that reputation system...and i never heard of any sponsored tournaments for prizes and etc.... and the online roster updates didnt exactly do a good job of what their purpose was.... for example....dwayne wade was killing it all season and after all the roster updates hes still just an 78 rtating and has no type of mid range....amare is still a 76 and u can only use him effectivly if u kno how to play the post.........while nba live had a horrible online mode....2k was just 2 steps ahead of the game....
2k had online leagues...each league was managable off the game on the computer and had full stat tracking for each and every game complete with an espn style website, uploadable highlights....private message boards for each league....online league trading....playoffs and support for up to 30 players in each league.... on top of that they had sponsored tournaments such as the nokia nba 2k5 tournament which was very popular and gave the winner 10000 dollars.....they had better protection from quitters and droppers by actually giving them the loss when they quit or dropped and noting it in their record...full profiles ith all the stats of each user on the lobbies...for example percentage of points in the paint from three point line mid range and etc.. which made it easy to track cheesers....the only big thing missing from 2k's online mode was chat rooms....they had online modes for their street game, their 247 mode and anything else... and their roster updates were intuitive and realistic...dwayne wade by the end of the year went from a 78 to a 90 rating....
live desperately needs to at least bring online leagues to its online mode...im not sure if theyll do this since next gen titles are coming up but eventually this is a must for their game...i can not stress how fun it is to be in an online league with multiple users and be the leader in watever statistical categories..make some good trades and take ur team to the playoffs...and maybe eeven win the mvp....if any of u want to see a sample of what i am talkin about let me know and ill link u to one of the leagues.... i hope live adds this and other features to their online mode it would be extremely good for their online community