CONFIRMED: NBA Elite 11 Delayed until 2011

[dat swag]

Just cancel Elite for 2011 and come back in 2012 with LIVE...The name NBA Elite will be now and forever synonymous with failure, cancellation and a severely sub par product. If EA is smart they will reboot LIVE

[Behindshadows]

Even as one of their largest supporters, I am very happy with the delay or cancellation of this game.

People over the last few pages, have done nothing but used this moment to kick EA sports while their down and come in here with all the fanboy talk about the other game. We get it, your a 2k person and you want to gloat, but please do it elsewhere. This is a perfect example of why we are in a situation where we got 1 title this season. Because of bias people like you.

These developers made a mistake to focus on 1 objective and it backfired, and I understand that time in development is the essence and you can get caught up. I also understand from a consumer point of view, of anything less than what Live 10 brought to the table is unacceptable and obviously someone at the HQ felt the same way.

Just the small sample we got to play was a poor representation of the NBA and to basketball as a whole. These guys have been removing feature after feature, each year and it's finally caught up with them.

Stick to a direction and roll forward don't change anymore, that should be primary objective. Build off what you already have and grow from it. I honestly believe if they would have built off Live 10, and just added animations, add the new presentation and more game modes. This game would have been just that: Elite.

The graphics engine they have is such a thing of beauty, when it's used properly. They've proven that, the gameplay in Live 10 was the best in years, player movement since Live 06 and on, has been nothing more than a poor representation of human motion and physics. This is where the dilemma is with this game and where the trouble begins.

Overall I hope they move forward and release a stellar product. If they decide to still release Elite 11, well better late than never! If they decide to way and just release Elite 12, well as long as it surpasses all things and ideas then I'll be great-full for that too.

[Mikocop]

I'm putting this garbage just behind the old Mike Ditka football game for the Genesis.

[BiggD]

www.ebgames.com 3/31/11 ????

[dragon4thQ]

Quote: Originally Posted by BiggD

www.ebgames.com 3/31/11 ????

place holder date

[jmarcguy]

Hey if EA comes with a great game I'll get it! Not biased at all. Just want value for my $$$.

[Pared]

All the comments about being "scared" or "done" are a complete joke.

You DO NOT want one company making a sport video game.

It's as if people are oblivious to what happens.

I enjoyed it more when we had 3 or 4 options. Live, 2k, ID, NBA Street... All these games brought basketball goodness to the video game player's table.

[loadleft]

I debated about posting on this subject at all because I feel as though I speak for a small minority, plus I've been crying about this on these boards for months, way back when they first announced this new direction for then NBA Live 10.

I personally am glad that Elite has failed to this degree. Not that I wish ill will to the devs or anyone else, because I think they've been great, but I wish that they would take this as a lesson and refocus on basketball with this series and not video games. I hate to admit it but it comes across to me that the devs may be more fans of video games than they are of basketball and it shows in their design choices. They've chosen to incorporate things that video game junkies really care about over the things that a basketball fan would, and yes I know this is a video game first but it's a video game about basketball. The challenge for basketball games or sports games in general when compared to other great video games is the users frame of reference is much further away in games like Modern Warfare, if they have a frame of reference at all, where as probably everyone that plays video game basketball (or at least the large majority) has attempted to play basketball on some level. I bet just as large of a majority of Halo or MW2 players have never even shot a real gun. I only bring these games up because they are widely considered great video games and it comes across as the goal behind Elite was to make a great video game about basketball.

In my ideal world the devs would have learned that the best approach is to make the deepest most realistic, but LIMITED by reality, basketball game as they possibly could. I feel however that all they've learned is that basketball gamers really care about how the game looks and so they'll just layer pretty animations and graphics on top of Elite and it'll be the same game. I think they're vision is to ultimately create the Modern Warfare of sports games, a game where you'll have Youtube videos of guys doing all kinds of things due to their extraordinary stick skills, but have little to nothing to do with basketball at it's core. Things like I strung together these 18 crossovers and dunk in D. Howards mouth, will be the norm, I fear!

I've read this enitre thread and most of the demo impressions and I looked for one person that had a positive opinion of the game that did so because it was a fundamentally great basketball game and I didn't find one, it was always about the controls and what they could do with them. It seems like everyone that likes the game wants to be the next A.I. and not Tim Duncan. I guess that's cools as long as there is another choice but I really hate what's happened to my beloved Live.

Live 10 may not have been the G.O.A.T. but it was the G.L.O.A.T. (Greatest Live Of All Time) yet it needed so much more and I had hopes that this would be the year it got it. I wanted to see that each team presented a true to life challenge of playing that team and not just the ramped up but generically challenging A.I. of Live 10. Plus I wanted to see an attempt at adding all the polish (or at least 1/2 of it) that 2K has. That to me would have been the GOAT as far as basketball games go.

Based on responses by the devs in this very thread it sounds like they're still just going to pursue the goal of bringing videogame fans on board as customers and now realize that "looks" will have to be a bigger part of that than anticipated. That makes me sad and I must admit that I hope if my assumption is correct that they fail at that too. I think they are overlooking what seperates basketball from other sports and makes its fans love it so. Things like proximity to the game and its players, the simplicity and the ability to mimic its greatest players yet the layering of unseen complexity that separates the players at the YMCA from the ones in the League, the closeness its fans feel with their favorite players. Think for instance their are few other sports that allow you to walk around in replicas of the players on court attire without looking like a fool, no matter how much I like Peyton Manning I just can't see walking around in football cleats, pants, and a helmet but I'll go to a barbecue in a basketall jersey and shorts in a heartbeat. I think things like that illustrate how basketball fans feel closer to the game than fans of other sports and therefore require the game to look, feel, and play just like it does IRL. My point is that I don't think that the same approach that worked for hockey and soccer will work with this game; I think the game will have to be much more faithful to real life than the devs maybe thinking even at this point. I hope like a few others have said that they've realized how important being "sim" is to a basketball game though I fear they remained unchanged in the belief that the best way to do it is to provide the user a platform in which he can showcase his ability to manipulate the controller not the depth of his understanding of the game.

I began my conversion to 2K about a month ago in anticipation of Elite being what it is. I hate the fact that I've switched because I've always preferred the feeling of EA's game over 2K's, I just couldn't bare to go through another season of neglected franchise mode and I knew long ago that EA's current approach would be realized as what Elite is today and I just am not interested in fantasy basketball (not the one played at ESPN.com) where anything is possible. I'll end my rant with I hope that whatever it takes for Elite to focus on REAL basketball and not what could happen if a player could... (you fill in the blank with things like: jump 12ft into the air, hit 30 shots in a row, move at warp speed, etc.) happens and Elite becomes the product of 2K depth with Live 10's core.