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NBA Live 13 Has Been Canceled

by Glenn Davis | 5:47 pm, September 27th, 2012

Well, EA Sports’ return to the basketball gaming world didn’t go as planned. The company was going to release NBA Live 13 this fall, its first NBA Live game in three years and first NBA game, period, in two years (NBA Elite 11 only ever made it as a mobile game; the planned console releases for that one were also called off). This game would have to be good in order to make a splash in a market now dominated by the NBA2K series. But if it was good, EA Sports could re-position itself as a leading manufacturer of NBA games. Both the company and game remain recognizable brands. One strong effort, and they’re back in the thick of the competition.

Instead…

EA Sports today canceled its troubled NBA Live 13 project. It is the second time in three years that sports video gaming’s dominant publisher has pulled the plug on its NBA simulation at the last minute.

Why decide they couldn’t go through with it so late in the process (the game would have had to come out soon to make it out in time for the start of the season)? According to EA Sports executive VP Andrew Wilson, it was a question of quality:

[M]aking 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.

On the one hand, it seems like a sound decision – either releasing a slipshod, subpar game now or releasing a fully-formed one in the middle of the year when no one’s going to care anymore both sound like disastrous decisions, so if the choices are either that or not releasing the game at all, then pack it in and try again next year.

But the fact that the “pack it in and try again next year” strategy is actually now a trend for NBA Live doesn’t portend good things for the series’ future. And the immediate reactions to this news (entirely understandably) boil down to, “What the hell is going on at EA Sports”? What did happen to this formerly-respected franchise? Guess we’ll find out next year. Or next generation of gaming consoles. For now, just watch below and ponder what might have been.