And, To No One's Surprise, EA Cancels NBA Live 13

I expressed my skepticism over the state of NBA Live 13 earlier this month when EA revealed the game's first trailer and announced it would not be coming out in early October, as is typical of NBA simulation games. Just a few weeks later, EA Sports executive VP Andrew Wilson is writing an entry on the NBA Live blog explaining that Live 13 has been canceled.

I wish I could say I am surprised, but I'm really not. The trailer we saw looked pretty rough -- this despite being edited in a fashion conducive to helping make the game look better than it really is. Something seemed wrong when EA consistently avoided talking about the game; whereas competitor 2K Sports had been touting the features of NBA 2K13 for months, EA had nothing to say about Live 13. When it didn't show the game at E3, EA claimed it was because "it deserved its own time." That was hard to believe then, and it only became more apparent that something was up when we were weeks away from the time it should have been out and still nothing had been shown.

Wilson's post notes that Live was being developed by a new team -- unlike previous iterations of Live (and the ill-fated NBA Elite 11), which were developed at EA Canada, Live 13 was in development at EA Tiburon, the studio best known for the Madden, NCAA Football, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour series. Its credits as a studio do not include any basketball games, which was sure to make this transition a challenge. That's even more true when considering the game would be going up against NBA 2K13, the latest in a long line of high-quality basketball sims made by Visual Concepts. Competing after not having a product on the market in years would have been a real challenge with or without a great game, and from the sound of it, a great game NBA Live 13 was not.

"We also made a commitment to deliver a high quality experience -- this is what our fans expect and what we demand of ourselves at EA Sports," Wilson wrote. "But making great games is not easy, and we're just not there yet on NBA Live 13. Having continued to look at the game over the past few days, it's clear that we won't be ready in October. And rather than launch midway through the season, we're going to sit out the full year and stay focused on making next year's game great. This decision puts us on the right track for success well into the future in a rapidly changing industry."

I'm of a mixed opinion about this. On the one hand, I'm amazed that a company as big as EA hasn't been able to ship a basketball sim since 2009. It would be one thing if this were the first time it canceled one, but the same thing happened with NBA Elite 11 -- just before the big revamp of the Live series was to be released, EA delayed the game and later canceled it. It's now been two years since that happened, and while it may not have spent two solid years developing a new basketball game, it's incredible to me that it wasn't better prepared to bring out a game this fall. Basketball fans do, fortunately, have a very solid option in NBA 2K13, which comes out next week, but the problem is it is now once again the only option.

On the other hand, EA should be commended for doing what's right and taking the hit (again). It can't be cheap to yet again have spent time developing a game and paying a licensing fee for a product that will never be able to make a penny. And while you could argue it's only doing what's best for business long-term (releasing an awful game now could hurt sales of future NBA Live titles), what it's done ensures gamers won't drop $60 on a bad game. And you can't knock it for that.