NBA Live 13 Trailer Arrives, But the Game is Delayed Indefinitely

[mrprice33]

Quote: Originally Posted by Tha_Kid

Don't get the reminiscing over Sony's NBA title when Microsoft shut down a much more promising franchise in a more premature fashion.

GOAT

[Boilerbuzz]

Quote: Originally Posted by King_B_Mack

Not true at all. The hoops market is and always has been big enough to support at least 3 NBA titles. If you put in a half assed effort however going into things looking for simply a profit, you're going to get burned. If you have a quality NBA title out there it'll sell, you simply have to stick with it. 2K was in Sony's position at one time stuck on a single system that not a WHOLE lot of people had with the better selling system already dominated with 2 titles a juggernaut in Live and a game that had it's loyal base in Sony's Shootout. Difference? They put the proper resources behind their title and stuck with it to build their rep not looking for the quick and easy payout and here we are. The basketball market is bigger than it's given credit for. If you aren't going to put in the time needed and the resources required to succeed, then yeah you need to get out, but don't start trash talking the market when you aren't doing what you need to be doing to make it in it. That's the problem I have with both 2K and EA's treatment of the college basketball market.

You might want to think it was big enough, but your wrong. If your game isn't going to sell at least a million units, you won't come close to breaking even. And now that cost has risen. Considering the PS3 market is barely over 2 million back then, how was Sony going to cut into the 2K/Live slice enough to survive?

2k11 saw/helped the market grow to the 5-6 million range you see today. But we don't know if that is sustainable yet. We will see. Still the PS3 portion of it split three ways isn't going to cut it for anyone. Hindsight is 20/20.

Now, the price of producing games has exploded. Check out the EA and 2K financial reports. Any game company. Making AAA console titles has gotten much more expensive at a rate faster than the market growth.

As for NCAA, Choops was considered one of the best basketball titles of all time. So, obviously, they treated that market well. If you are talking about the decision to not make a game, it's well documented that they were forced into that decision by the CLC. EA lost money on theirs, so to criticize them for being out of it is unfair.

The bottomline is this, you can't complain because a company bows out of a market that loses money for them. Find out more about the finances instead of assuming.

[23]

Quote: Originally Posted by Boilerbuzz

You might want to think it was big enough, but your wrong. If your game isn't going to sell at least a million units, you won't come close to breaking even. And now that cost has risen. Considering the PS3 market is barely over 2 million back then, how was Sony going to cut into the 2K/Live slice enough to survive? 2k11 saw/helped the market grow to the 5-6 million range you see today. But we don't know if that is sustainable yet. We will see. Still the PS3 portion of it split three ways isn't going to cut it for anyone. Hindsight is 20/20. Now, the price of producing games has exploded. Check out the EA and 2K financial reports. Any game company. Making AAA console titles has gotten much more expensive at a rate faster than the market growth. As for NCAA, Choops was considered one of the best basketball titles of all time. So, obviously, they treated that market well. If you are talking about the decision to not make a game, it's well documented that they were forced into that decision by the CLC. EA lost money on theirs, so to criticize them for being out of it is unfair. The bottomline is this, you can't complain because a company bows out of a market that loses money for them. Find out more about the finances instead of assuming.

I think things have turned and companies don't see people love choices. Sony has a name for baseball which wasn't a big name once but its now recognizable

What these companies didn't do that two Kay did was keep plugging at it because that's the difference I see.

As it stands now sony couldve made a nice hoops game while people were clamouring for an alternative hoops title to sell

Folks don't like madden being solo nor two Kay for whatever reason which would be a huge driving force now.

You can't just say on we aren't number one so we,ll just go home. If that's the case tons of companies would be dead right now

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk

[youvalss]

Quote: Originally Posted by mrprice33

GOAT

I was in love with this game at the time. I even found some mods and stuff (some of them made the game crash, but it was still fun). And I'm probably the only one who preferred Live 99 over 2000 (except for the MJ thing), well I played them, all on the PC, which made it look so good. So I played ID 2000, which was so fun, even with its limitations.

Anyway, I still don't understand what was the purpose of releasing a trailer and then saying that the game is delayed (who knows if even released at this point). So what are they going to do if the game is cancelled? Release a 20-minute gameplay video? I just don't get it. Does anyone have information about this?

[thareezen]

it looks like live 2005 with updated graphics. why are the shoulders so stiff when the start to crossover?

[andrewdski]

Quote: Originally Posted by mrprice33

Some history from a pretty well-connected source: When the Elite team went in to start on Elite 11, they scrapped all of the code from Live 10. It's basically gone. Now, when they started work on Live 13, the team went in to find what of Elite they could use as a base and it was basically nothing. They may have thought they could do this in a year but really they need at least 2, and they're finding that out now.

This certainly sound plausible, but there's one thing I don't get. When they realized they had to throw away all of Elite, why didn't they at least go back and look at Live 10 and see whether they could salvage anything from that? Surely they had that code backed up somewhere, they can't have literally wiped every tape and disc, can they?

It seems like they just decided to start over (again). How many times does EA have to demonstrate to themselves that writing a AAA sports title on this generation of platforms more or less from scratch is more than a year's work? I don't think anyone has done that. It was hard to do on PS2/XBox. I doubt anyone but EA would have the nerve to try it at this point!

I hope they've now learned not to attempt it again!

[Boilerbuzz]

Quote: Originally Posted by 23

I think things have turned and companies don't see people love choices. Sony has a name for baseball which wasn't a big name once but its now recognizable

No, they see it. The problem is that they need to be able to afford to give choice. If 5 million people want choice, and 5 million people choose the same title, then the choices go away. You don't get "choice" for free. That's what happened with NHL 2K. People continued to "choose" EA title - which most people thought was better - by IIRC a 5:1 ratio, but no one considered the improvements in 2K and it died. EA's may have been better, but by THAT much?

Quote:

What these companies didn't do that two Kay did was keep plugging at it because that's the difference I see.

2K kept at it because the trajectory of the sales warranted AND the fact that the sales were enough to sustain a team. I bet money that if after 2K7, they were still only barely selling a million units, we would not have the game today.

Quote:

As it stands now sony couldve made a nice hoops game while people were clamouring for an alternative hoops title to sell

I don't understand this though. It wasn't as if this was Sony's first basketball game. And even though I liked it in the PS1 days and thought it was the prettiest game down the line, it still was quite broken in gameplay. When Live 06 released, it was BY FAR the prettiest. Five years later, the visuals either stagnated or took a step back and the gameplay didn't wow enough people. So, just assuming that a game that looked good would actually be good isn't a good idea. Not saying your wrong - just saying I wouldn't assume that it would be a competitive product now. You can I can debate this further in PM if you wish. :P

Quote:

You can't just say on we aren't number one so we,ll just go home.

Absolutely. I didn't say you had to be number 1. I said you had to have enough sales to continue to operate. You can NOT continue to operate at a lost. ESPECIALLY during the recession - people are forgetting that recession at the time.

Quote:

If that's the case tons of companies would be dead right now

Uh... There MANY dead companies man. Either folded into other companies or totally gone now. Should I start a list? Acclaim, Midway, Eidos, Infogam, Westwood, etc... It's really sad. The industry is actually hurting more right now than people think.

[Boilerbuzz]

Quote: Originally Posted by andrewdski

It seems like they just decided to start over (again). How many times does EA have to demonstrate to themselves that writing a AAA sports title on this generation of platforms more or less from scratch is more than a year's work? I don't think anyone has done that. It was hard to do on PS2/XBox. I doubt anyone but EA would have the nerve to try it at this point!

I think that's why they chose the Elite engine. It's basically the NHL/FIFA engine right? I would bet that they assumed that all they had to do was "replace hockey/soccer with basketball" and they were done. That's just a guess though.