NBA Elite Delayed; NBA JAM to be Released as a Standalone Product

It’s only been a week since the NBA Elite 11 demo went live and now EA Sports’ president Peter Moore released a statement today announcing the delay of the upcoming basketball game. Feedback from the community in regards to the demo and also realizing that they are on an upswing from last year’s title were among the reasons EA decided to delay the game. Having played the demo many times, I’ve seen some issues that the final version could have but I’ve also seen a lot of promise the franchise has. This is why I’m actually glad they are going to delay it.

“This year, we set extremely ambitious goals for our new franchise, NBA ELITE. We are creating a game that will introduce several breakthrough features that have been missing from the basketball genre.” said Moore. He goes on to explain the reason for the delay, “As with all of our titles, we continue to evaluate and improve the code right up until launch. Feedback from consumers is a very important part of the process; NBA ELITE had the benefit of play-testing, a demo and a lot of our own research. All that feedback revealed some concerns about gameplay polish, so we’ve listened to your feedback, and made a judgment that the game would benefit from more time in development.”

There is no set date when the title will be released, one would think they would try to release it before the holidays but even that could be a bit hopeful. For those who still want the EA basketball experience, EA Sports will continue to update the roster and Dynamic DNA for the entire season (for free) for NBA Live 10, something I can’t remember anyone doing for a franchise that is taking a year off.

For those looking forward to NBA JAM, EA will now be releasing a standalone product for the Xbox 360 and PS3 “in time for the holidays”, which is what I think they were going to do eventually anyways. NBA JAM on the Wii however will be releasing on time, on October 5. You can head over to the EA Sports homepage to read the press release in its entirety.

This is a bold move by EA, seeing as they were coming off a relatively good year from their previous title, they are definitely going to lose a lot of momentum. But that said their total control mechanic and the new physics engine has a lot of promise. If the team can take a few months to polish the title, I can see it being a solid competitor to NBA 2K. I personally don’t think this is in response to 2K’s next offering because I have yet to see anything that makes me think this year’s 2K won’t be unlike the rest of the games in the series, full of bugs and lacking fleshed out game modes. I was looking forward to Elite mainly for the controls and for their Legendary mode which is exactly how NHL’s Be a Pro mode works and their mode is one of the best “superstar” modes in the genre. I actually wish 2K did that last year with their title because they also had a lot of issues that could have been fixed with a bit of polish. I definitely would have liked the game more if it wasn’t for the poor My Player mode and the numerous issues. Well for now at least, all you basketball fans out there only have one choice unless you liked NBA Live 10 so much that you’ll be willing to stick with that till Elite comes out. More information is going to be released soon so we’ll keep you posted.

[Source: easports.com ]