Chris' Blog: Playing the blame game with NBA Elite 11

[carnalnirvana]

i think Ea is right they want to be, many may disagree but i strongly feel they have laid the foundation for their goal domination of the online user vs user basketball market....

fifa... many sing its praises but it has completely forgotten about the offline gamer for the last 3 yrs while it built its online gamer base. now it sells mainly as a online game. you want offline gaming you went to its competition who did ML very very well. anyone who is a serious footie junkie knows manager mode is beyond broken......

same thing is happening here the comp is doing franchise mode well so why compete with that since they cant get online right for years now. this is a business and if you are behind you do what the competition cant get right. The online market has grown so huge in recent years online basketball is there for the taking.

hence the focus on player control, and the blatant ignoring of the AI ala fifa

its becoming a multiplayer world, the days of gaming alone atleast in my opinion is slowly dying.

and i think its time we accept that basketball games are complementing each other, one has offline play done well the other does online well. now all ea has to do is beef up its looks and visual flair and its "cha ching"

i think the last thing standing in EA's way is our years of loyalty, to LIVE...

this is elite the online basketball simulator

[Gotmadskillzson]

EA brought this storm upon themselves when they changed their title to Elite. When you call your product Elite, then consumer expectation of that product is going to be sky high.

I mean that is like a guy walkng around with a t-shirt saying I'm a stud across the front of it but the guy is a 5ft tall steve urkel.

If you going to talk the talk, your product has to back it up. So honestly Elite doesn't live up to it's name. 3 years from now, maybe it will, but not this year.

And if EA have to pull this game from stores, it wouldn't be the 1st time EA did it, they did it with Madden back in the day as well.

[ChaseB]

Quote: Originally Posted by MrSimCity

At E3, I felt the control scheme had potential and I still feel that way. But just about nothing else was worked on minus the commentary. All resources were allocated to the controls and controls only it seems.

Yeah, I dunno, it probably has something to do with expectations. I always felt like the first NHL on 360 was overrated because I thought the controls worked but not much else was really done well there. I kind of was using that as a baseline for this title.

But I've said in the past that I thought the difference was that at the beginning of a generation you could get away with a NHL-style remake, while now it's a bit of a tough sell.

Quote: Originally Posted by Court_vision

I am going to make a big call here........it's definitely not as bad as LIVE 07. That thing was Hall of Fame bad.

Ha, yes THANK YOU. That's what I said early on in this thread. That game was just an abomination.

[TheBrothers24]

Quote: Originally Posted by carnalnirvana

i think Ea is right they want to be, many may disagree but i strongly feel they have laid the foundation for their goal domination of the online user vs user basketball market....

Exactly how I feel. I believe this game was built for online play as the main course and offline play was just a side dish. This whole game was made to center around the EASBA. They saw what fifa and NHL did and how it gets a lot of praise for it's online features and figured the same will translate for this franchise as well. Well at least for this year. I've accepted this game as a user vs user game and solely that.

Too bad I am not an avid online gamer so this game is not for me.

[Gotmadskillzson]

If sports games start going that route of focusing on online only, then they need to release two seperate games. Make an online version of the game for a set price, then release a game for offline users at a set price.

[IV THA UNITY]

I'm sorry but this has to be said and this is just my opinion. EA makes weird decisions on who should lead their projects. Why is Ian Cummings a Lead on Madden when his favorite sport is soccer and Littman is a Hockey guy working on a Basketball game. I mean I love basketball more than baseball so if I worked on a Baseball game the passion wouldn't really be there, no matter how much I tried I would have to follow that sport for years before I could make a serious impact on that type of game.

[Aces15]

I agree with some of the voices in here that are saying that the Elite team is probably pretty happy with where they are with the game.

I think this whole name change along with the foundation that was already in place came from a rash decision that was made based off of not wanting to compete with 2K.

You guys are saying how Live 10 was the best reviewed Live in a while, and it really was a pretty solid game. But then the suits looked at the sales, and obviously they were doing something wrong if sales were that bad.

And all the while, the reason the game was getting such good reviews was because it was getting closer and closer to the style of 2K ball (even though it had some very unique aspects to it that set it apart).

I think this led to them just doing a 1+1 in their head, and deciding that in order to sell they needed to distance themselves from everything out there, and that's exactly what they did.

[Pared]

Great post noshun.