What's to Become of NBA Live?

[seanhazz1]

I think if LIVE team keeps to their word and actually makes Connected Franchise a focus, integrating the Pro-Am players, and it turns out even remotely like Madden's Connected mode, with the ability to use multiple personas, they have a winner.

A huge part Madden's success also lies in it's addictive Connected Franchise play, not to be forgotten with all of the Ultimate Team stuff being thrown around.

IMO, League Stat tracking and playing MEANINGFUL and competitive games against friends and strangers while building team and communities should be their focus, not some gimmick solo-player endeavor, IMO. Both basketball games have failed us here repeatedly, when its such an obvious solution to the "replay value" question. We, the community, didn't join the internet to play alone, or offline.

Combine that idea that with the Full-editing that the community has more than asked for, and we probably have a real race between the two basketball games, even if nothing changed graphically in the next version.

Solo content keeps you playing alone, multiplayer content will build the NBA LIVE community and the hype, like 2K did during multi-year Live's hiatus. 2K didn't see their online leagues as community building and skimped out and removed features from them the last few years, and Live could carve a serious niche there with full console, web and mobile app integration.

The ground I think NBA Live can make up to encourage fans going forward?, Just keep your word.

Also, I would keep a sharp eye out for their (EA's) competitive "cross-platform play" efforts, an endeavor that would surely payoff well should they succeed going forward. I also hope they would seek to combine their EA access and their Origin Access into one "All-Access" if they go this route, and it seems the direction they are currently heading, shortly before the rest of the gaming industry takes it in full stride, since they have deals with MS who is already doing it (Rocket League?), and as they look to replicate and improve upon the STEAM model.

I hope some people with EA Access pick up NBA LIVE to give devs new POSITIVE feedback, and encouragement. Keep Hope Alive!

[riichiieriich]

They need to go an arcade/street route. If they did NBA Street again it would sell like hot cakes.

[seanhazz1]

Quote: Originally Posted by riichiieriich

They need to go an arcade/street route. If they did NBA Street again it would sell like hot cakes.

Isn't the way people play Pro-Am already that, minus the absurd moves?

[Crunky]

I like Barbatrucco point they have to scrap the current NBA idea and focus on one or a couple of games. Competing against the competition is a huge hill to climb because their so far behind. Their 2yrs away from being 2yrs away and 2k is not resting because their competing indirectly against madden, mlb the show and fifa. NBA live to compete would need to hire more devs but I don't see that happening because they would lose money in a project their already losing money in. Even if they hired more devs they would need to train these guys, keep them up to date on the coding and engine of the game which cost time and time equals money so at the end of the day their still losing money.

The higher ups at NBA live see the dollar signs 2k is making and they want a piece of the pie but really they don't have to compete directly against 2k in order to make money. With Kobe retiring this is the moment to cash in, just focus your time, energy, resources on one game of Kobe the Box vs Lakers 10 finals game would do it. If you focused your time, energy and resources on that one game the level of detail, graphics and animations(mo-cap) would surpass anything 2k has done. It push the current Gen consoles to their limit to the point non sport gamers want to purchase the game. For the higher ups of NBA live it would be huge risk to scrap the current NBA but a huge risk worth taking.

[PopcornJones77]

This chart depicts how many units worldwide were sold by NBA Live vs NBA 2K since 2008: https://twitter.com/PopcornJones77/s...77770096852994

Data is drawn from vgchartz.com.

To add context for how EA may financially see NBA Live today, EA's Star Wars: Battlefront sold 14 million units as of May 2016: http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/...top-14-million

[dubbduces]

Honestly, if they made a fleshed out mobile game next year (stat tracking, franchise, etc) it would corner the mobile market. NBA Live Mobile(Soft launched in Canada right now) is fun and while i'm playing it all I ever think is "Man this would be awesome if they had a full complement of modes rather than just ultimate team modes"

[kadzier]

Gotta be frank.

If EA ever wants to put out a game to compete with 2K in the basketball simulation genre, they're going to have to suck it up and pour full resources into multiple (2-3) years of development on a new game. None of this try and play catchup one year at a time stuff. 2K is already too far ahead for someone to seriously build a contender in the space of one year

[Crunky]

I've done the math NBA live is really 4yrs behind 2k I messed up when I said their 2yrs away. Remember they canceled elite 11, 12, 13 and they started from scratch with 14. That's really a whole lot of ground to make up even with a delay it won't be possible to catch up to 2k. I don't see the competition letting up anytime soon since their competing indirectly with madden, mlb the show and fifa. Now I can see why they switched focus to mobile is to salvage the NBA live brand. For all these years we finally see where NBA live heart truly lies and that is the casual gamer everyone's Sim wishes were for not basically ignored each and every year. They might as well abandon an NBA game and just come out with an alternate to 2k, make it a street game. Delaying it for 1yr won't really make a difference unless it was 2 to 3yrs I could see the point. But even that doesn't make any sense because you wouldn't be making any money for those yrs.