With a new name comes a new attitude. At least that’s what EA Sports hopes for with a rebranding of their classic basketball simulator. From this point on, NBA Live will be known as NBA Elite. The first official title to sport this name change will be the 2011 edition of the basketball simulator, NBA Elite 11, hitting retail shelves in October.
NBA Live has been the name of the series since 1995 when NBA Live ‘95 (still has a good ring to it) released on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. What started out as the premiere basketball franchise has since fallen off in recent years to competitor 2K Sports and their NBA 2K series. However, things were starting to look up for the NBA Live franchise after a solid, but not great, performance this past year with NBA Live 10. It might not have been better than NBA 2K10, but it was leaps and bounds better than the previous year’s effort.
Now EA Sports wants to take their NBA franchise to the next level, a position where most other EA Sports franchises already reside. NBA Elite 11 will be the first basketball simulator to give gamers accurate 1:1 control over the players on screen. No longer will video game basketball be left up to a roll of dice on whether or not you score a bucket or block a shot. NBA Elite 11 will be 100 percent user controlled, or so EA Sports says.
The way EA Sports plans to accomplish this ambitious feat is by implementing a new “Hands-On control’ scheme, much like EA Sports did with their hockey franchise NHL. In NBA Elite players will have precise control over every movement their digital counterparts make by being able to independently manipulate each arm of a player with a different analog stick on the controller. No longer will you just press a button and watch an animation on screen, hoping it helps you break past a defender.
NBA Elite 11 will also feature a new physics engine allowing players to move independently of one another on the court, removing the two-man interactions that have “long taken the user control out of basketball simulation video games.”
And finally, NBA Elite will have a new “skill-based” shooting system to remove the often-times-cheating roll of the dice system that leads to insane amounts of frustration when playing both the computer and friends in basketball video games.
Time will tell if EA Sports actually delivers something special for their first iteration of NBA Elite. EA Sports is definitely making big promises with this reimagining of their NBA simulator. But you know what, at least they’re trying to innovate instead of being perfectly comfortable sitting on coast. Looks like we could have a heated competition between EA Sports and 2K Games this coming basketball season. ‘Bout time.
