Today EA have announced a bold new direction for their yearly basketball simulation. NBA Live is no more, instead welcome NBA Elite. The new game will be launched onto the Xbox 360 and PS3 formats this October. EA are promising big changes, with the name change being a rather small one….
The new title will offer players a new control system, a new real – time physics system and a brand new technology base. The new ‘Hands On Control’ scheme promises to give players a better more controlled experience, allowing for one-to-one responsiveness. The new control scheme will be applied across all elements including dribbling, dunks and drives to the basket.
“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.”
New real time physics, promises to remove the two man interactions which have long taken the user control out of basketball simulation videogames. This new engine will allow each player to move independently of each other.
“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.”
Some interesting promises, sounds like EA are going to push basketball simulation to the limits later this year. Fingers crossed it works.
