Playing the blame game with NBA Elite 11 - RaychelSnr's Blog

RaychelSnr's Blog

Playing the blame game with NBA Elite 11

Posted on September 22, 2010 at 03:56 PM.

(37)

If you didn't read my thoughts on NBA Elite 11's demo, be sure to check those out now. No need to re-hash what I said there.

What I'd like to do instead is to play some blame game as to who is to blame for what might be one of the biggest disaster releases from a major gaming company in quite some time.

Because somehow, somewhere, someone is to blame for what accounts to the worst basketball title on the market in this generation of consoles. Sony's NBA game outclasses Elite 11, and I'm sure I can name several games over the past decade on far inferior hardware that outclass Elite's gameplay, some completely and laughably dominate Elite.

I wrote about Elite earlier this year, I thought the name change signaled that EA had hit the panic button. Now that we've played Elite and saw the entire Live series was blown up, I think it's safe to say EA definitely panicked.

Live was being outclassed by NBA 2K both in sales and in quality at every turn. EA brought in Mike Wang to shore up the Live series, and I believe he made Live a very competitive game to 2K last year. But for some reason or another, perhaps we'll find out sometime exactly what went down, Wang and EA had a difference in opinion and Wang went back to 2K.

And EA was left in a very tough position, so they panicked.

It appears EA decided that their approach wasn't working and that they had to shake it up. In the process, EA blew up the old Live series and decided to forge a new path to recreate how basketball games are supposed to play. Because "if it ain't broke don't fix it" didn't seem to apply to this case -- except it did. And that's where the story goes bad.

If I were in charge of EA, I would've canceled the release of NBA Elite 11 as soon as it became apparent that one year is not enough time to recreate an NBA franchise. And then I would've made my team watch their competition, their previous effort, and a few real NBA games. Because what I'm seeing just doesn't come close to any of the three.

And because of Elite 11, gamers are looking for someone to point the finger at. I want to caution OSers that I don't think you can blame any one single person, but I think you can clearly blame the culture that pushes for yearly releases no matter the cost. NBA Elite is a good concept in theory, redo how basketball games are played by introducing some things no one else has done.

But something that big and that large requires time, more than 12 months for sure, although the Elite developers probably got less anyways. I can't blame the guys working on the game. Like I said yesterday in my demo impressions, they faced a no-win situation. I feel for the developers of Elite, and perhaps another year of development might get the title going in the right direction again.

But it just feels like EA took us back to Live 07 and decided to try the climb the ladder again, except this time NBA 2K is now 4 years ahead of where it was then and Live is no longer outselling NBA 2K, so the climb will have to take longer and EA will have to do it while taking yearly losses because the game's sales are way down.

The decisions made by EA that have led up to Elite 11 will be the downfall of the franchise. Whatever sales Elite generates will be people who probably don't return the next year, especially if they see NBA 2K11 in action. After what seemed to be a shaky throne last year, NBA 2K has unquestionably captured the title of the sim gamers choice for basketball for years to come.

Look for the panic buttons to be pushed across the entire company when Elite gets horrendous reviews and sales are in the toilet. The future isn't bright for EA basketball, but at least NBA Live was given a chance to die a dignified death before this race to the bottom began.

Perhaps this will be a wake up call for EA basketball, but I think it's really closer to a wake.

Chris is the Executive Editor of Operation Sports and maintains this blog on the site. He is also a native Oklahoman and avid storm chaser. You can follow him on Twitter @ChrisSnr.

Comments

# 1 Tpitt85 @ Sep 22

couldn't of said it better myself

# 2 poilbrun @ Sep 22

Chris, I appreciate your blog, but your analysis is missing an important thing: NBA Jam. I think the sales of Elite won't be as disastrous as they ought to be given the game in itself, but the presence of NBA Jam will mitigate this factor. Just read the demo impressions thread and you'll notice that a lot of people are unhappy with the demo but will get the game nonetheless for NBA Jam. That's a very good marketing ploy from EA.

# 3 wxn8822 @ Sep 22

NICE WRITE UP.
As you said, LIVE changed its name in order to refresh people and redo a new game. However, the result is sadly converse, they just tarnish their new name.

One thing I am really sure is MIKE WANG is extremely a genius. Last year, 2K sucks without him, but live10 took a big step foward. This year......you can see... Does not EA really have a great gamaplay designer?? you have money, you have great soccer game, but why do not basketball

# 4 Onpoint17 @ Sep 22

Somebody needed to say this. Thank you so much. I couldn't agree with you more. The NBA Elite demo was the biggest embarassment I've ever seen. No wonder they put off releasing the demo. After the the reception it got, it should have never been released. Seems like karma to me after EA went to buy out 2K Sports. Now they're getting their just desserts.

# 5 yopis @ Sep 22

They could not win the against 2k so they tried to devalue everything 2k has done better with this whole process. This was a shameless attempt to buy more time to put out the same old (we are in year 1 of a process excuse). They lost plain and simple, im not jumping up and down for 2k or sad for EA , I don't own stock in either company. I hope in a few years they can get something going but the corporate culture of EA will have to change for sure. Smoke in mirrors only last so long. Maybe this will be a triple play to MVP story but maybe not time will tell.

# 6 HustlinOwl @ Sep 22

agree with everything you said, I mentioned the same thing in another thread. If I was in charge I would have took the year off focused on NCAA Basketball (I mean why purchase the license) and went after the arcade crowd with NBA Jam.

# 7 LingeringRegime @ Sep 22

I blame Peter Moore and his cronies. I respect the devs incredibly, because they were put between the proverbial "rock and a hard place." Every developer that has graced the OS boards have always seemed to be hard working, humble, and respectful people.

However, the smoke and mirrors campaign that EA constantly is pushing has to been eliminated. The EA Sports games I grew up with in the 90's (and had much respect for) have been turned into a shameless ploy to fool the consumer that their games are high quality. I watched the adverts for Elite and was dumbfounded by the claims that were made. If you didn't play the demo, and were a serious NBA fan you would be inclined to picking the game up. Thankfully, a demo was released.

EA really needs to wake up. Their efforts of targeting the young crowd are alienating their "older" fans who helped make their empire what is today. As one of those older fans, sometimes I regret putting so much money into their pockets. The only EA Sports game I have purchased this year is NHL 11. Perhaps, I will roll the dice with their MMA game.

# 8 Chivs @ Sep 22

Why did they bother realeasing a game this year? 2K was obviously going to out-sell them no matter what they came up with, now this has just ruined the Elite brand which has damaged the next couple of year's sales as well.

# 9 rudeworld @ Sep 22

poilburn might be right but your also forgetting that this series comes out every year and the consumer will not go for this "free" NBA JAM thing every year as we all know NBA JAM is not a yearly franchise. Speaking of which didn't the NBA have a alternating year thing with NBA JAM(NBA Steet) and the other one NBA Ballers? Whatever the case maybe EA best tactic should have been to release Elite '11 as the pack in game for NBA JAM and tell the consumer that it is only a test beta to what they are trying to come up with for 2012(next year) because this game in its demo state is not even in shouting distance of it chief rival and NBA Video games Champion NBA 2K11.

# 10 jr2424 @ Sep 22

Hey Chris, love that last line.

# 11 SBartlett @ Sep 22

The main reason they didn't cancel this game is because fear of losing the entire Live fan base to 2K. If they leave the bball sim genre too long, there's no coming back from that. Look what they did with their own Madden franchise to the APF2k8. The series is dead, and it's going to be in the gutter for a while now rebuilding with this base platform of controls for another four years.

The smartest thing they could've done would've been to cancel Live/Elite and pour some more resources and marketing into NBA Jam. Give EA Canada time to develop a truly deep basketball experience instead of running some rookie basketball engine out on us and telling us it's revolutionary. NBA Jam can carry the sales they need for their earnings because we all know Live was in an uphill battle - your not losing money there if Jam can cover the majority of those sales.

Upper management at EA Sports handled this terribly wrong. They are losing fans off a demo! Packaging it up and dressing this game up all nice will only get them so far.

And I agree with the above comments: Mike Wang is one heck of a developer when you have a Live game that was reborn - and now their whole basketball studio collapses.

# 12 scottyp180 @ Sep 22

i agree. yopis makes a good point, EA trashed everything about the 2k series making it seem as though you cannot make a good basketball game, or sports game for that matter, without a physics based engine. Repeatedly they said "this is something not possible without a physics engine because two player based animations results in canned animations." I remember one particular instance where they said something along the lines "we aren't adding new animations and showing them off in a trailer to make the game look good." Well what they said back fired because 2k11 is better in nearly every aspect of the game. The funny thing is that if I had no knowledge on either game before playing them I would have thought 2k11 was the one who had the overhaul and addition of a physics engine.

# 13 dipset2050 @ Sep 22

Great point on "wasting" the Free NBA Jam on this game at a $60 price point. As I stated on the straw poll taken for if this game is even a purchase - they need to sell it right now as in today for $40. Just allow retailers to sell it when they get it. At least recoup something b/c if you were "giving away" Jam anyway, at least at $40, you can rationalize it as $20 for Elite and $20 for Jam (which is overpriced for a XBL/PN DLC) and don't even patch it more than once and IMMEDIATELY start working on Elite 12. Get user feedback and focus on the foundation they've built. B/C I can see their vision and I like the direction but they need to bring so much more and I believe they can compete in a while from now.

# 14 statum71 @ Sep 22

I'm a bonafide 2K guy for several years now.

But as a former Live player it really saddens me to see the franchise in such a bad state.

# 15 jsquigg @ Sep 22

You made your decision before you played the demo. You never gave the game a chance. It isn't going to be 2k, but I'd rather read articles where the writer hasn't made up his mind ahead of time. You can't judge a game by the demo, and you know better than that. You made up your mind that 2k was better based on info release and demo, and while 2k will end up being much better it would be much more interesting to have read a take on Elite taking into consideration it's role as a rebuilding franchise. EA makes more money by not taking a year off and in all likelihood the game will keep improving.

« Previous12 3 Next »

RaychelSnr

Create Your Card Flip Card Over