Here's the thing with that sometimes you have to be willing to lose money to make money. As long As EA doesn't put more money into this product to truly overhaul it in all aspects it's always going to be in the same place.
EA is a large enough company to eat that lose and be ok if they truly wanted to and that's part of the bigger issue. The DEVs on this game are 100% passionate about it I believe that. You can feel it in the gameplay. But the larger company just looks at Live with a fraction of that passion and because of that we'll always see the same issues.
Also franchise modes in sports games are way more sought after than most thing. Especially for hardcore basketball fans. now for casuals that will only buy a game just to play online with their friend and they don't really care that's another subject. now with most companies and games the casual audience are the ones you try to cater towards first but with the position Live is in that's going to be a death nail for them. In the absence of true competition 2K has basically gotten to the point where it's the Madden or McDonalds of basketball games. I say that to mean this when people think basketball games they think 2k, compare that to McDonalds there are 10+ local burger places way better than McDonalds but they can never take away part of McDonalds market share because its just what people go to. This is all my opinion I'm not an expert but I think Live needs to have the things that will bring the hardcore basketball fans in first then the casuals will come. So they have to work in reverse IF EA truly wants Live to be bigger. It's going to be hard work and when things like a deep franchise mode are missing its going to be hard. When little timmy tells their parents they want a basketball game the parents not knowing anything will pick up 2K.
We'll see how sales do but honestly I don't see them being good. I really hope I' m wrong because the gameplay on Live is really good love that there's no server issues like with 2K. But I'm buying 2k day one because of all the other things I can do and I'm sure a lot of people will do the same. They've done a lot with this game this year let's see how they build on it next year but if EA is only judging by how the sales are to put even more money into the game it's only so much the Devs can do. Also the marketing of this game has just been horrible IMO the way they've handled it is only people who are in message boards and are really into NBA games even know live is back. I judge a lot of this based on my son he's 11 reads a lot of gaming magazines and when I asked hi if he wanted live or 2k he asked what is NBA live.... made me realize his generation didn't grow up knowing live as THE basketball game. That's how long they've been a non factor. Sorry for the long post but I just want to see Live get a win I don't think they'll beat the other game in sales anytime soon but they don't need to just yet but the game has to basically be perfect at this point to move the needle. They are that far behind.
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