At least we’re not the only ones that know NBA Elite needs some work.
Scratch that. A lot of work.
The NBA Elite demo became available to download last week on the PS Store and Xbox Live and was flat out awful. The demo received a barrage of criticism from gamers, many of which hated the game, and the internet exploded with hilarious glitch videos.
EA has responded to these criticisms in a noble way. They announced last night that the game will be delayed until 2011. I guess this means EA is going to continue to work on the game and try to churn out a product that isn’t eye-bleedingly and laughably terrible. You have to give them at least some credit for this, because you know it’s going to lose them sales. By doing this, EA are conceding defeat to NBA 2K11 very clearly and very publicly. They could have dug their head in the sand and told us that the game is great, but they knew it wasn’t and are facing the criticisms head on. We just have to question, based on just how embarrassing the demo was, what will their competence in fixing these errors be like?
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(The infamous Jesus glitch. Skip to 2:15 if you want)
Either way, I hope we get some good competition in basketball games soon, so I’m rooting for Elite to make a great product. 2K really went all out on 2K11, more so than usual, and could be making the best basketball game ever. I don’t think that it’s entirely a coincidence that 2K’s noticeable effort increase happens at the same time EA tries to re-energise their basketball franchise. Competition is great for the industry, and it’s a damn shame Elite 11 turned out so god-darn terrible. Hopefully they can release a competitor sometime down the line.
The good news for basketball fans is that NBA Jam will still be released for Christmas and will now be a stand-alone title for the PS3 and Xbox as well as the Wii, meaning us Jam fans don’t have to suffer a loss of £40 or the monstrosity that was Elite 11 in order to get our hands on the game. That, I think, is something that EA should have done all along.
