You may have heard rumors recently that EA was changing the name of its basketball games. Well, those rumors were true as EA announced today that NBA Elite will be the new moniker for the EA Sports NBA game franchise. NBA Elite 11 is said to ‘revolutionize the way basketball simulation games are played.”
The game will achieve this through an all-new technology base, a new control scheme, and a real-time physics system. The new “Hands-On Control” scheme will allow greater responsiveness of a player’s movement and actions on the court. This new scheme replaces the traditional predetermined animations that required players to wait for a series of actions to play out. The new control scheme will impact everything from offense, defense, dribble moves, dunks, drives to the basket, fadeaways, mid-air adjustments, steals and more.
“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.”
Other additions like real-time physics will allow players to move independently on the court, essentially removing the two-man interactions that are traditional to the franchise.
“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.”
Look for NBA Elite 11 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, developed by EA Canada, this October.