[Steve_OS]

EA Sports has posted an open letter from NBA Live 14 Executive Producer, Sean O’Brien. He has worked on EA Sports basketball titles for over a decade, with his last stint ending in 2010, as Producer of NBA Live 10. He has made his return to NBA Live 14 and has posted his journey back, as well as his plans for the next-gen title.

Listed below are some of the items of interest, but make sure you read the entire open letter, right here.

Priorities.

Quote:

...My first priority was to focus on core gameplay. We needed to capture the essence of half-court basketball, providing 1-on-1 isolation both in the perimeter and the post, the 2-on-2 chess match that is the pick and roll, while still offering the gamer the opportunity to push the basketball in transition and have the control required to get the ball into the lane to either take the ball to the rim or find an open teammate if the defense collapses.

The talent.

Quote:

...One of the things I knew I wanted was the best locomotion and player movement engineers in the company. I was fortunate enough to recruit Gary Paterson (shown above) as my Senior Creative Director, who previously worked on FIFA and was the architect who delivered physics to that franchise. Gary felt that we needed to innovate with dribbling and that no game had truly captured the control required when the gamer was dribbling the basketball.

Synergy Sports Technologies.

Quote:

...This is the data they use in order to prepare for upcoming games, finding the advantages or insights needed to try and gain the advantage on their opponent. I want NBA LIVE to be relevant to the NBA fan throughout the entire NBA season, providing data and content updates that keep your gaming experience fresh and in lockstep with everything that's going on in the real world NBA. I want to remove subjectivity from how we rate players and have that data provided by Synergy Sports to completely drive how the game plays. I'm really excited about being able to update our game within an hour of something happening in the NBA.

Commitment.

Quote:

...What we're doing isn't easy and I'm really excited about the progress we've made. I believe that our direction is the right one. The ball is in our court and we need to execute. No more screw ups and definitely no more excuses. ...I understand the skepticism and if I were you, I'd be skeptical too…or maybe cautiously optimistic. I'm not asking you to pre-order the game based on the E3 dribbling demo and a blog post. I'm simply asking you to give us a chance and we'll let the game do the talking. Something that I'm sure is long overdue in your minds (and ours).