In a refreshingly blunt statement, EA admitted that its latest basketball project, NBA Elite, was canceled because it "was going to be a bad game."
Restricted to a tight schedule, NBA Elite was supposed to reinvigorate EA's long-running basketball series previously known as NBA Live. However, faced with production problems and differing ideas of where to take the series, EA stopped talking about it and eventually made the decision to pull the plug entirely.
Above: A game you'll never play
This ended the publisher's long history of annual basketball sims. 2K Sports was probably pretty happy with that, leaving its NBA 2K11 as the only realistic basketball game on the market for 2010. The people at EA, obviously, were not as thrilled.
Andrew Wilson, an executive at EA Sports, said the company could have put out NBA Live. It probably would have sold enough to turn a profit, too. However, no one over there was happy with the product, and it didn't make sense to delay it asthe "2012" series of sports games will be under development soon. So...
"Ultimately, it was just going to be a bad game," said Wilson, adding, "We're proud that we made the choice to not just put something out there that wasn't good."
Wilson also admitted it was too lofty a goal to completely redo the NBA Live franchise without missing a year. I guess in hindsight it's what they call in sports lingo "a rebuilding season."
Maybe next year,Kevin Durant.
[Source:IGN]
