Many people believe that EA’s decision to change the name of its basketball game from NBA Live to NBA Elite is nothing but an illusion. Others believe that EA is ready to come with that heat to finally compete with NBA 2K11 this year. That will be hard to do since NBA 2K11 will have Michael Jordan on the cover and will likely release the NBA 2K11 Draft Combine to hold people over before the game’s release date. That won’t stop EA from trying though.
To convince the people that NBA Elite is indeed more than just a simple name change, EA has released a long press release stating how hot and new NBA Elite is going to be when in comes out. I’m going to take the wait and see approach before casting judgment on the series, but the NBA Elite 11 Cover Athlete needs to be Lebron or Kobe to compete with what they are doing over there at 2K Sports. Read some of EA’s press release below and leave comments on what’s really good with NBA Elite in your eyes.
“We plan to profoundly evolve the interactive basketball experience in a way that the category has not seen for a decade,” says Peter Moore, President, EA SPORTS. “In NBA ELITE 11, we’ll introduce a gameplay experience that gives fans the control on the court that they have been begging for in a basketball game for years.”
Using the design principles from some of EA SPORTS top rated franchises, NBA ELITE 11 introduces several significant gameplay changes that center around user control. The new ‘Hands-On Control’ scheme allows for one-to-one responsiveness of a player’s movement and actions on the court, as opposed to traditional predetermined animations that require users to wait while a scenario played out before making the next move. Hands-on Control applies to everything within a player’s offensive and defensive arsenal, including: dribble moves, dunks, drives to the basket, fadeaways, mid-air adjustments, blocks, steals and more.
The new real-time physics system in NBA ELITE 11 allows each player on the court to move independently of one another, removing the two-man interactions that have long taken the user control out of basketball simulation videogames. In addition, a new skill-based shooting system requires accurate user input, based on a player’s position on the court, versus the randomly generated dice rolls that have driven shooting in basketball videogames in the past.
“NBA ELITE 11 will give gamers the same skill set that a pro basketball player has at his disposal,” said David Littman, Creative Director, NBA ELITE 11. “This is the first basketball simulation videogame where you are controlling every movement, dribble move, shot, dunk, lay-up, steal and block in real time with one-to-one control. You’re no longer going to push a button and watch the computer generate a long animation sequence. It is like being on a basketball court with an amazing set of skills. This is going to change what people have come to expect from a basketball simulation videogame.”
“From the first day of development on this product, it was clear that we intended to pioneer a groundbreaking change in the basketball videogame segment,” said Jordan Edelstein, VP Marketing, EA SPORTS. “It’s a whole new game that warranted a brand new name to fully capture the transformation we intend to deliver in NBA ELITE.”
source: Business Wire
