NBA Live 15 finally showed itself in real action yesterday, as well as debuting its list of features. With about a month to go until release, the hearts and minds aspect of EA's PR campaign has only saw vieled letters of promises released up to this point, giving gamers little to be excited about with this year's title.

But now? Now we have some concrete info, and here are our thoughts on it.

Robert Kollars: Well, you can count me as one who is impressed with what was shown. I played live last year for months, and while it was extremely rough in areas, one could see the potential. Yes, it's easy to doubt this company after the last 5 or 6 years, but that trailer was full of strong attention to detail, authentic looking basketball, and much improved graphics over last year's title. As with many, I still need to see the game in motion with 5-on-5 action, but for me at least, the wait was worth it. Still not overly impressed with the feature list, but in all honesty, I would rather have them working on fixing the gameplay as opposed to worrying about new modes.

Dustin Toms: This might be the best trailer EA has ever released for the NBA Live franchise. The visuals look pretty good, but it's the consistent movement throughout the entire clip that gives you the maybe-they-got-something-right feeling. I like the added animations and the signature celebrations, especially Westbrook's 3-pointer -- that looked awesome. I wish they kept the camera on player's faces longer rather than switch in and out so quickly. EA is really touting facial reactions, so let's see them and dissect them.

It seems as though they've added in a tutorial mode, which was one of the largest gripes in last year's debacle. Perhaps the tutorial will ease gamers into actually being able to play the game and enjoy all of these "new" features. NBA Live Ultimate Team adds an auction house, which has proven to be a time waster with the Madden version. It's always fun collecting and trading to compete with the team that you want to win with. Other than that, I'm not all that excited for the additions to what was horrid gameplay.

In the end, until we see and play NBA Live 15 and know it is in fact playable, this game is dead in the water.

Matthew Coe: Well I'll tell ya what, EA Sports got this new trailer right. From the music to the action shots, the new NBA Live 15 trailer really showcases the improved visuals and some much needed new animations. I think NBA Live 15 may actually be a credible next-gen title as opposed to last year's effort. It seems that development team heard the fans and critics loud and clear and really did focus on making a game that stands out. I'm surprised and impressed.

Now with all of that said, I'm not impressed with the features that we got information on today. For me, I wanted to see a renewed focus on offline franchise mode somewhere in there and I didn't get that. I understand if EA Sports wants to focus on Ultimate Team and online play ahead of the more traditional "hardcore" features, because they've got to differentiate themselves from the competition. Ultimately though, the gameplay will be what draws me to or away from this title and we need to see some 5-on-5, as has been said.

At the very least, I'm interested in NBA Live 15 again and that's something I didn't anticipate.

Chris Sanner: Yawn. You can make NBA Live 14 look like it's a competent basketball game in a teaser trailer, so I'm not going to make any judgements on the gameplay at this point from a series that deserves none of my trust.

What we do see is that the visuals are definitely much improved, far above last year's effort and more on par with what NBA 2K has managed to do. What we don't see is how the actual 5-on-5 gameplay is going to be, and we likely won't for another week or so. The new paint-physics will help the game, as will the improved transistion game. But at the end of the day, this game is touting features the competition already does much better than it did last year, so any improvements are likely only to bring Live on par with certain aspects of 2K.

However, compared to the dumpster fire that was last year's NBA Live, this year is definitely looking to be a step in the right direction. Live simply needs to get the online human vs. human aspect right and nail something like Ultimate Team -- if it can do that, it'll have a future in EA's upcoming release schedules.