NBA Elite Stumbles in Trasition

Two days ago Electronic Arts Sports was supposed to release NBA Elite 11, the latest title in their long running, lackluster basketball franchise. Consistently critics have bashed EA’s prior NBA Live series for being “unresponsive” and “lacking control of your own players.” This has caused them to lose many sales to rival 2K Games. So earlier this year at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo), EA dropped a bombshell when they announced that they were going to totally revamp the dwindling franchise. They heralded this as the “most realistic basketball game ever” thanks to an all new, fully re-written physics engine that would give you “complete control”, a problem that had plagued the prior installments. They even gave the franchise a new title to try to show that this would be a completely different game. When EA had announced this, I was initially doubtful since their previous games had really flailed in comparison to the 2K series, but after watching the preview video it caught my eye, and I decided to look into it. After researching it on the internet during the summer, I started to get excited about it. It had seemed that EA had fixed all of the problems that constantly popped up in basketball video games. They gave it a new control scheme that was much easier to understand, and they had finally gotten rid of what they call “dice roll shooting”, a system that determines whether you make a shot by chance, with better players having better odds of making the basket. Shooting in the game would now take skill, dividing the good from the lucky. Having lost many a game on lucky shots from half court, this feature really called to me. Overall this game sounded awesome, but I found out that they were releasing a remake of NBA Jam to come bundled free with NBA Elite 11, I was ecstatic. I can remember the countless hours I played that game on the old Super Nintendo system at my Aunt’s cottage as a young child. This had sealed the deal for me; I was going to purchase that game. Early this fall I pre-ordered it, and they told me October 5 it would be ready for pick up. Each week the anticipation constantly built up inside of me, when it got to September I could barely stop thinking about it. And then the call came. It was the Wednesday of the week before the release, September 27^th. I had come home from school delighted to find that the demo for the game had been released and available to download. I promptly initiated the download, but halfway through the phone rang. Caller ID said it was Gamestop. Being the week before the release, and having pre-ordered games before, I knew the drill. It was going to be a pre-recorded message of an overly peppy employee about how my copy will be ready next Tuesday. But when I put the phone up to my ear, half-listening I was stunned. The pre-recorded message was telling me that the game has been indefinitely delayed until at least 2011, with the rah-rah cheerleader voice adding insult to injury. My jaw dropped, and I didn’t believe it, immediately calling Gamestop back. But it was true, and I was stunned (Though my parents would beg to describe my reaction differently). Now it took a while for me to get over this, but I finally did. I realizing that if they can’t even release it by the holidays, then there must be major problems with this game and it is probably for the best that it is delayed. But just when it seemed that I had gotten over there little calendar misjudgment, EA decided to stick some salt in the wound with the announcement that NBA Jam will be released separately next week for an undisclosed price and will no longer be bundled with NBA Elite 11. I found this utterly shifty of them to not reward loyal customers of theirs who had preordered the game and who decided to wait out the lengthy delay while 2K would be released on time. I lost all faith in EA at that point.They have made some mistakes before, but they really dropped the ball on this one. Sources estimate that EA Sports will lose over a million sales (at $70 a piece), and I can tell you now that one of those lost sales will be mine.