Death Visits The Resurrection Of NBA Elite
By Dr. Eleanor Vance | Published on January 01, 0001
The most fateful day for NBA Elite 11 was not Monday, Sept. 27, the day it was postponed indefinitely. It’s Sept. 21, the day it was crucified. As a metaphor for withering criticism, the kind hardcore gamers dispense every day, “crucified” is an especially apt word covering both the substance of and response to a fan-made video the day after the game’s demo arrived. Instead of showcasing the revolutionary, fluid movement and controls EA Sports strove for, the film devolved into blunder-filled sports vaudeville.(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c" }).render("79703296e5134c75a2db6e1b64762017"); }); https://kotaku.com/the-passion-of-the-bynum-30874431 Boston’s computer-controlled Jermaine O’Neal, standing all alone at the high post, takes one step and clangs a back-to-the-basket finger roll, a shot completely out of place for the situation. The Lakers’ Pau Gasol then fails to inbounds the ball, to the frustrated sounds of buttons clacking – possibly because [[link]] the pass command was moved to the trigger this year. It’s never been used there before. The Celtics then quickly score on the Lakers – who have only four players in this end of the court. That’s because of The Glitch: L.A.’s Andrew Bynum at the jump circle in a T-pose, arms spread wide, standing there, says the narrator, “like Jesus in the middle of the court.” It is impossible to know exactly what role this video had in EA Sports’ decision on Monday to postpone NBA Elite 11 indefinitely. The publisher declined or didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. But this video wasn’t the only one, just the most visible. And the 500,000 views it garnered on YouTube in less than a week, plus the mocking, barbed comments underneath, helped to write NBA Elite 11’s obituary as a game renamed, remade and rejected. The official language is that Elite has been delayed. With no new release date – or even quarter – specified it’s still an open question whether NBA Elite 11 will actually be released. This is almost an unprecedented situation. Though fully licensed sports titles – notably NHL 2K11 on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – have been canceled or put on hiatus in the past, the decision to do so has never come after the release of a demo and seven days before the main title was due. https://kotaku.com/nhl-2k-isnt-dead-its-just-resting-453109424 “I think it’s fair to conclude that there is lasting damage to the EA Sports brand,” said Michael Pachter, the Wedbush Securities analyst familiar to gamers and industry watchers. “Those fans interested in a basketball simulation game will have only one to choose from for the first few months, likely, and possibly for the next 12 months.” That only other option is now NBA 2K11, the leading professional basketball simulation, in both sales and quality, on this console generation. NBA 2K’s triumph is shocking on a couple of levels; the first is that it scored a clear TKO on sports gaming’s leading publisher, in a fully licensed, major sports simulation – before either game released. The second is, a year ago, NBA 2K and NBA Live, as it was then known, were the closest they’ve been in critical reception, although not sales, in years. EA Sports made two huge gambles in the intervening time. The first was to completely overhaul its NBA Live franchise, rebranding it as NBA Elite and promising a new skill-based shot control and intuitive dribbling and juke commands that captured the open-ended artistry of pro basketball. For this, EA Sports president Peter Moore assigned David Littman, the producer on the NHL series – a game dominant not just in its genre but across sports games – to revamp their flagging NBA property. “Guys like Litty know how to get in, look at things in a different way, get after the issues, and fix them,” Moore told me at E3. “He still has that hockey oversight, if you will, but we’ve still got a core team there that is focused on [it]. Hockey needs less love than basketball, if you will.” https://kotaku.com/he-doesnt-mind-what-you-call-them-unless-its-monopoly-5573538 Elite’s new emphasis on the twin analog sticks marks it as a game inspired by NHL, which uses a similar control concept (the left stick is your legs, right stick is your hands). But evidently, Mike Wang wasn’t really buying it. Wang was the guy EA Sports Vancouver spirited away from [[link]] NBA 2K9 to work on NBA Live 10. That coup and Wang’s prestige made him development’s chief representative in the marketing run-up to NBA Live 10, and deservedly or not he’s the face of NBA Live getting back on course. Wang, though, defected back to 2K Sports and Visual Concepts in February. “Talking about Live 11, and what [EA Sports] wants to do with the game, it was clear we wanted different things creatively,” he told Kotaku at the time. https://kotaku.com/2ks-nba-team-steals-key-player-back-from-ea-5462010 EA Sports pressed ahead, signaling its overhaul with the game’s [[link]] name change announced on June 2. The same day, NBA 2K revealed that Michael Jordan, basketball’s greatest ever superstar, would appear exclusively on its cover and in a special game mode dedicated to his career. It would be the first time he appeared in a game since 2003. The palpable enthusiasm for Jordan dwarfed anything for Elite. Then came the second big gamble: Stoking demand for a PS3 and Xbox 360 version of NBA Jam, believed to be a Wii-only title for six months, announcing it for those two consoles, and then coupling it to NBA Elite 11 in the form of a free download code included with the retail game. Theoretically, enthusiasm for the arcade favorite’s reboot should have buttressed any lack of it for NBA Elite. That also meant
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