Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

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Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby JaoSming on Mon Aug 06, 2012 10:46 am

http://kotaku.com/5931063/for-nba-live- ... for-itself

Summary of the last month
Two weeks ago, Operation Sports—the Sporting News of sports video gaming—noted the total silence from EA Sports about its NBA product since a disastrous E3 appearance. Tuesday, in a conference call with investors, no mention was made of NBA Live releasing in the final three months of 2012. Wednesday, word spread this game might have a fully digital release suggesting a lower price point, and feature set, than a traditional $59.99 retail sports video game. The response from NBA Live spokespersons was that the game "continues to drive toward beta."

Summary of the NBA Live 13 Dev Cycle
EA Sports has aggressively pushed the talking point that NBA Live 13 isn't coming off a three-year development cycle, and that's reasonable. Elite represented an entire year of wasted development. The project was reassigned to a different studio, and the new team had to tear it down and understand what it was working with. That accounted for a lot of 2011.

When I inquired about Live's omission from the publishing calendar, I was told it was a technical decision made by the company's investor relations division. There's still no formal release date assigned to this product

*Release by Oct 30? "At this stage, Yes"*
The game at E3 showed startling deficiencies. Some had an excuse—a bug in the rebounding logic required them to turn off some collisions in that build. OK, but other gaffes had no explanation. For example, I saw an AI-controlled Dwyane Wade running back-and-forth, repeatedly, from the perimeter to the high post while the opposing guard held the ball.

It was enough to make me ask if I was looking at a different build. I was, EA Sports said, but it was a later build than the one shown to me at Portland. Whether that spawned new glitches, who knows. They chalked it up to bad demonstrations

Give credit where it's due. Roundly disparaged as a PR stunt and a rubber stamp, NBA Live's advisory council, a group of gamers convened in multiple expenses-paid trips, has honestly held this game's feet to the fire. After the hands-on in June, they flatly told EA Sports they shouldn't even have brought it to L.A. It's my understanding they're no happier with it today. Rumor, reported by ESPN, is that NBA Live was pulled back from EA's Summer Showcase this past week; the Advisory Council's disapproval likely figured in, though I can't say for sure. A no-show in British Columbia two weeks before may also be because the council wasn't giving a thumbs-up.

One of them played overseas professionally. I heard him counsel an animator on the differences between Derrick Rose's and Kendrick Perkins' jab-step. In my preview, I might have been looking just for signs of life, or examples that the game could deliver on conceptual promises. They were looking for something that behaves like the league they watch every day. They didn't see that, and the fact this was a pre-alpha work in progress was no excuse.


Not a bad write-up on a complicated situation. I wonder if this guy broke any NDAs or not with those examples
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby burnshroom on Mon Aug 06, 2012 11:00 am

Just got through reading this over at Kotaku...

Not a very promising article this close to what should be tipoff.

With 2k dropping previews and announcements and feature lists left and right EA has yet to show. This is not how to win fans back to your franchise after a 2 year layoff.

If this goes bad for EA I think it goes REALLY bad. And as much as I like 2K, EA was always my first BBall gaming love. Sad to see this happening.
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby Andrew on Mon Aug 06, 2012 1:45 pm

For the moment I'm done speculating, but hopefully news will come soon and that news will be more positive.
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby _Steve_ on Tue Aug 07, 2012 5:18 am

Doesn't sound very promising at all...
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby shadowgrin on Tue Aug 07, 2012 10:35 am

I don't know which is more unfortunate, EA thinking that a new dev team given with just one dev cycle is enough to rebuild Live from the ground up or Live fans expecting the new title to be a decent game if it does get released.
I'd be more surprised if EA manages to even release a half-decent game.
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby Andrew on Tue Aug 07, 2012 10:40 am

They did it with NBA Live 10. The transition to the new tech seems to be problematic, though.
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby shadowgrin on Tue Aug 07, 2012 10:56 am

afaik the dev team for Live 10 wasn't a completely new team. It's different building a game from scratch with a team composed mostly of new people (or even new to the genre) as compared to a team composed of some members of the old team with new people involved.
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby Andrew on Tue Aug 07, 2012 12:03 pm

Correct, the NBA Live 10 team had a lot of familiar faces from the NBA Live 09 team.
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby atlwarrior on Wed Aug 08, 2012 2:56 am

Even though NBA Live 10 came out a decent game, it also seemed unfinished in some areas. It wasn't what it could have been.
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby JaoSming on Wed Aug 08, 2012 3:18 am

IMO, the unfinished part is the alley oop slow-motion glitch that was introduced in the patch.....
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Re: Unfortunate Article from Kotaku

Postby Andrew on Wed Aug 08, 2012 10:02 am

Also, the lack of in-game injuries, at least in terms of having any kind of effect on gameplay and Dynasty. Players limp briefly after taking a hard hit and there's acknowledgement of it in the commentary, but nothing further than that.
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