Early NBA Live 09 details
by 
So now that much of the information around NBA Live 09 is free to be discussed, some of it is making its way out thanks to producer discussion on the official forum. It’s disappointing to hear there won’t be a Superstar mode, though the “ground-breaking feature” is still to be announced. That takes me back to Online Team Play as the most anticipated aspect assuming they made some of the improvements that have been suggested for it.
Here are some excerpts of posts that have been made so far. I’ll continue adding in as new details are posted.
The number of new animations we’ve added in this year are in the thousands. It felt like we were in Motion Capture every other day getting new stuff. Here’s a snapshot of things that are new.
Sig Shots – We recaptured the animations and added a lot of new ones. My faves right now are Iverson’s and Grant Hill’s. Iverson’s just feels sick. And, look for some signature free throws. Chuck Hayes’ is ridiculous.
Passes & Receptions – We captured a bunch of new content like penetrate and kicks, pick & roll passes and catch and sweeps.
Dunks – We got rid of our old dunk system and put in something MUCH better. I’m happy to say that dunks are back for Live this year. All new animations and a bunch of new in-air collisions.
Like I said, this is just a snapshot. We also have all new anims for blocks, steals, interceptions (some nice ’shoot the lane’ pick-offs), post play, locomotion, celebrations, lockdown defense, first steps, quickstrike dribbling (including our new ankle breakers), Pick & Rolls (our new Pick & Roll control feature is nice this year. Jeff can talk about this one though.), a bunch of stuff for mascots, cheerleaders and crowd as well. I’m sure I’m missing some stuff too.
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Now you can hold down Right Trigger while doing Quickstrike moves and trigger Ankle Breaker moves. It basically triggers crossover moves with bigger hesitation poses at the end of them. It’s your set-up move. Once you get in that pose your defender has to get ready to react because you can explode out of those moves with a first step. If the defender guesses the correct way he’ll lock you up. If he guesses the wrong way you cross him up and leave him flat footed. Or, you can even pull-up for a quick jumper. So, essentially, it allows you to take players like Deron Williams, do some regular crossovers to get a rhythm going, quickly break out into an ankle breaker crossover, and try cross your man up and get to the bucket. What I like about this is that it gives our Quickstrike a purpose. There’s an offensive and defensive side of it, and creates a “game within the game”.
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We pulled pro-hops this year because we have a new feature we call Signature Play Calling and we are using the Y button for this. I’m sure we’ll be talking about this in more detail later, but I’ll give you a quick summary of it now. We’ve re-vamped all of our plays and our play-calling system. Teams will run authentic sets and we’ll have a bunch of different options in those sets that focus on your star players. You can run specific plays for Kobe, Pau or Odom, all out of the Triangle. We’ll give you one option to choose from 8 plays by bringing up our Signature Play Calling menu via the Left Bumper. Or, you can just push the Y button and it will select the best play for you to run at that time based on who is on the court. It’s almost like an “Ask Madden’ type idea.
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Sorry, no superstar mode this year. We’ve been working on something new this year that we’re pretty excited about. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to talk about it now because I probably wouldn’t have a job tomorrow if I did. We’ll be announcing it at E3. We’re pretty sure it’ll change the way sports games are made.
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June 16, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Sounds good, but can it top 2K?
June 16, 2008 at 10:06 pm
first
June 16, 2008 at 10:06 pm
not
June 16, 2008 at 10:22 pm
A question asked on the live message board. will we see a “Create-a-Team” mode this year with a good in-depth “Create-a-Uniform/Jersey” piece?
i graduated High School last year but have been dying to create my HS team for years with a detailed uniform creator!
The answer from the developer – I’d love to tell you, but I can’t. Sorry. It’ll be announced in exactly a month.
Could the new feature be some sort of expansion team mode.
June 16, 2008 at 10:23 pm
it sounds like it may be able to top ea now that the dunks are fixed but if nba 2k9 adds a superstar mode with their great gameplay no one will be able to stop that game
June 16, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I like the idea of the ankle breakers with the quick strike ball handling as long as it’s not overdone & too arcady. I personally was not a big fan of quick strke ball handling because it wasn’t that responsive & also too arcady. For example when I would try to pull off a crossover I would just get sucked into the defender almost as if my moves had no real affect on the defender. The only dribbling move that really worked was the spin move. Also I could do the behind the back dribble like 20 times in less the a second. WTF? I thought that the total control dribbling system they used from 2002 through 2006 was just fine. If it aint broke don’t fix it. I could do hesitation crossovers & it felt realistic. I’m also disappointed that they took out the pro hop. I know it isn’t used that often but I think it’s still needs to be in the game. The could’ve used the back button for playcalling. They should also improve collision detection to go along with the dribbling improvements. The on the ball defense was a little too effective for the cpu. If I’m using Chris Paul for example, I should be able to blow by most one on one defenders with ease. I could rarely do that in 08.
June 16, 2008 at 10:28 pm
i fail to see how the NBA Live series could bring anything to the table that would ‘change the way sports games are made’…
June 16, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Its certainly a pretty lofty statement. They’ve backed themselves into a corner now where they have to deliver something truly ground-breaking or else they’ll regret making them.
June 16, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Glad to hear that changes the dunk system, and added 1000’s of animations…maybe the locomotion could be better, hope fully players will move realisticly
June 16, 2008 at 10:57 pm
If you go to EA forums for NBA Live it list the producers for Live 09 & the producer working on gameplay & AI is Mike Wang. For those that don’t know who he is, he was the gameplay producer for NBA 2K8. Now I don’t know about you guys but that is very exciting news to me considering that NBA 2K8 probably had the most realistic gameplay I’ve ever seen in a basketball game. This can only mean good things to come for Live! EA must of bought him out from 2K just like they buy out every other aspect of competition that they can. Lol!
June 16, 2008 at 11:07 pm
except 4 NOT having the ability 2 PRO HOP N E more (WTF) “if it’s in the game it’s in the game” guess they DON’T believe in that anymore.
it SOUNDS GOOD so far hopefully this will be the year that i’m able 2 actually BUY LIVE again haven’t copped since LIVE 06 or 05
June 16, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Pasta, a great idea to improve the passing in NBA Live is to make it like the passing in Madden. If you hold the pass button down you will throw a bullet pass. If you tap the pass button you will lob it up. This would be a simple fix to the passing problem in Live & it would also add more user control. You should mention this if you get a chance to talk to any producers.
June 17, 2008 at 12:07 am
Watching the NBA Live 09 in-game pics, feels like they had again just one NBA baller for the player models: Tayshaun Prince. He should be on the cover…
June 17, 2008 at 12:25 am
Sounds like Live is headed in the right direction. Hopefully they put out a demo like last year.
I don’t know about that “madden” passing system in basketball if i want to swing the ball across the 3pt line I want fast passes. I can definitely see that slowing the game down alot.. the only time a lob pass should be thrown would be in the post or on a cross court pass.
June 17, 2008 at 1:57 am
i’m still stuck on this epic sports-game changing feature…honestly, what can be done that already hasn’t been done? five-on-five online? been done. online franchises/leagues? been done. online tournaments? been done. superstar modes? been done and admittedly won’t be included. incredibly deep gameface/create-a-player features? been done. video and photo uploads? been done. coach modes? been done. honestly, what else is there to do? five player (on the same team) online franchises would be just ridiculous…and with 82 game seasons (plus the playoffs), i would fail to see how anyone could coordinate enough hours together to make that a gamechanging and usefull feature. honestly, i’m out of ideas…and besides that…NBA Live needs to work on meeting the standards of other sports video games before it claims it can change the face of sports gaming as we know it…
the only other thing that i can think of is that they hope to release a game with a new cover, a roster update, and a ton of gameplay problems…all the while still charging $59.99 for the game, but i’m pretty sure that the Madden series has already done that before as well…
June 17, 2008 at 3:30 am
I think it is going to be PHOTO REALISTIC- meaning the models will no longer look like video game models but have more of a photo look. Or maybe the models will be as close to CG as possible.
They say it will change sports games so realistically what could they do and then use it in future sport games? Its has to be something like I mentioned above or a super human like AI.
Online co-op Franchise is my other choice. That would be my last guess. It has never been done before so it makes sense.
June 17, 2008 at 5:06 am
I am willing to bet that nobody but EA has any idea what this ground breaking feature is going to be.
June 17, 2008 at 5:23 am
Well, they have definitely generated interest and buzz with this “change the way sports games are made” I was thinking that it’d be something in the online play dept., but now I’m thinking a new camera angle that is more natural and on the floor.
June 17, 2008 at 5:23 am
i’m actually the one who asked about the Create-a-Team in that thread
i asked because that is my guess as to what the feature is if it is not an online dynasty type thing..
here’s what i’m thinking:
in NASCAR 09 this year they came out with the “Paint Booth” feature where you can totally design your car’s paint scheme on the computer and then import it into the game. at the OS forums, one of the Madden devs mentioned this as a possible idea for Create-a-Team’s in the future for Madden. so therefore that is my guess for the feature. a Create-A-Team or Expansion mode type thing where you can create your jersey on the game or import them from an online template.
I would really love to see a “Gamerface” type thing like Tiger Woods implemented for Tiger Woods 08 be implemented into the NBA Live series
June 17, 2008 at 5:54 am
pdub your probably right i do not think any info was released with this ground breaking feature i do not think people will know what it is until ea tells about it
June 17, 2008 at 6:00 am
Beau, I do not know much about golf games, but EA had already a GAMERFACE feature, You could put your photo onto a players face, way back in 1999, I guess. It was not perfect, but funny. Yeah, those good old NBA LIVE years…
June 17, 2008 at 6:05 am
Sounds good. It sounds like they have improved the rebounding system and defense.I Think EA as a whole is going in the right direction with all of their sports games. The only thing I don’t like is how hush hush they are about information. Also I
feel like NCAA should come out now since it is pretty much done. They would also sell way more copies if they released it now because people want to play a football game so bad.
June 17, 2008 at 6:42 am
lol, im still laughing abt this game… tayshaun prince should be on the cover LOL, all the players on the game have body types like him
June 17, 2008 at 7:04 am
someone needs to ask if they changed the controls now so the alley-oop isn’t using the same button as the icon passing. that was a big problem
June 17, 2008 at 7:36 am
um…this ankle breaker, quickstrike jargon sounds alot like what we have on 2K already, and 2k never explained it out like that, its just in the game. Quick Plays and Signature Plays? We have that(dual player control). I’m a big 2k fan and I’ll still purchase live if they finally get it right. Its that simple. Keep your new game changing thing, keep your fancy names for simple movements. JUST PRODUCE A SOLID LIVE FOR ONCE IN THE LAST 5 YEARS!!!
June 17, 2008 at 8:27 am
they are hyping the game up so it better be good i play 2k8 all the time they make the game to easy online anyone can play you just run to the hole and dunk it from like 20 feet away ea please fix it and 3 point shooting is way to hard fix that too PLEASE give a good product this year or i’ll just stick with 2k9 but for right now you are getting me excited
June 17, 2008 at 8:33 am
I am not gonna lie I would have bought this game had they included a superstar mode, but sorry this is a renter to me. I guess I may be leaning towards 2k9, I had more fun playing 2k8 with my friends then I did playing Live 08 last year.
June 17, 2008 at 8:48 am
Considering they had the uniform creator on their website last year, just didn’t have the ability to download them into games, that seems like a possibility to be included. Whether it would tie into a create-a-team would be another question though.
June 17, 2008 at 8:51 am
2k will be better like always
June 17, 2008 at 8:56 am
All of this is very familiar, sort of like the claims EA made last year…..i’ll believe it when i see it this time.
June 17, 2008 at 8:58 am
Its good they fixed the dunking system because it is just ridiculous, they look stupid and you can dunk all day especially in Team Play..also I hope they did add some block animations so good shot blockers can actually play realistically
June 17, 2008 at 9:09 am
my guess is that maybe this “ground breaking feature” could be maybe the addition of the summer leagues, or maybe the d-league, or it could maybe even be a bigger and better fiba tournement, but then again it could just be another online franchise mode where u can play your franchise online, i have many guesses
June 17, 2008 at 9:15 am
yeah DLane if this game DID have superstar mode, i would have bought it for the first time since Live 2004. I’ve always wanted that in a basketball game, and to have OTP on top of it just would be icing. but without superstar mode 2k’s gameplay is just still to good to pass up.
June 17, 2008 at 9:29 am
jeremy-
If including the NBDL is their ‘ground breaking’ feature that would be a little sad in my book. By now I am surprised that neither 2K or Live has included the D-league. I just don’t see that as changing the balance of Live vs 2K9.
June 17, 2008 at 9:33 am
I think the ground breaking feature is going to be leagues for online team play. That would actually be pretty sick….if done correctly. It would bring online leagues and stuff to a whole new level because you would actually have 5 human players per team instead of 1.
June 17, 2008 at 9:38 am
In theory I think that sounds great, but organizing to play games like that would be a nightmare. Its tough enough to find an hour or two out of the whole week where people a handful of people could meet up, let alone potentially 10 and for enough games to make up a season. Really for OTP I’d just like to keep a running list of stats based on position played or player controlled.
June 17, 2008 at 10:38 am
Im pretty bummed about no superstar mode i think it would flow soo well in NBA Live hopefully next year. I hope they have certain dunks to certain players it sucks seeing Shaq pull of a Tommahawk dunk from just inside the foul line
June 17, 2008 at 10:39 am
Im pretty bummed about no superstar mode i think it would flow soo well in NBA Live hopefully next year.
June 17, 2008 at 11:24 am
I’m with you on that. I’ve felt for a while like the mode would fit better in a basketball game than any of the other sports (even though it is fun in those games too).
June 17, 2008 at 11:43 am
ea always gets me hyped with theses types of comments put once i play the game it really isn’t something special. also the should improve the texture of the players were you could see the sweat like in 07.
June 17, 2008 at 12:30 pm
“We’re pretty sure it’ll change the way sports games are made.” I’ve heard that so many times its funny. Every year practically everyone says that, and then none of them come to close to changing anything. Stupid EA hype.
June 17, 2008 at 2:36 pm
A few things need to change for me to go back to Live. I originally really like ‘08, but after playing it more and more I went and got 2K instead. Here’s why:
1. The post-up moves were overpowered. Backing a defender down usually resulted in a basket or a foul.
2. Continuing the foul theme, one of these 2 companies needs to figure it out because the amount of fouls that happens in both games is over the top.
3. The dunks did look ridiculous so hopefully what they say about changing it is true.
4. Fake fast breaks. This is the main reason I stopped playing this game. Your defense would never get back, regardless of what was called, after you scored a hoop. The player inbounding the ball would always pass it to half court and you’d always have 4 on 3, never being able to stop it. My brother would do this with the Suns all the time and there was nothing I could do. Don’t strand two of my defenders under my own basket after I score. It’s like punishment.
5. Framerate drops. The PS3 version dropped frames consistently and it made the game hard to enjoy. Fix that.
Live was close last year, but the naggy things that really affected how the game was played killed it for me and is why I went back to 2K. That game is far from perfect as well, but is far better than Live’s offering.
June 17, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Pasta,
check out the end of the article that IGN posted today about NBA Live 09:
“Apart from this, players can also enter the Be A Pro mode, which allows players to select one player from a team and experience the game from their perspective. This can be done offline or online as well, now that there is five on five online team play where ten different people can control separate players on the court. Along with online custom leagues, there could be quite a lot to NBA Live 09 when it’s released this October.”
Be A Pro sounds basically like a superstar mode…. doesn’t it?
June 17, 2008 at 3:17 pm
here’s the article:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/882/882395p1.html
June 17, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Yup I think Ign just leaked the the new great feature. Cause they have been denying this in the Live forumes but Ign played the game, and probably didnt know they were keeping it hush hush on that topic.
I dont find that so ground breaking at all though, Unless I can be my guy on someone else’s dynasty. Didnt last years game have the ability for 10 users to play online in the same game? If so thats nothing new. I dont see the need of the whole be a pro mode when you can just player lock and already be your own player if you wanted. Im bummed if this ends up being the big news.
June 17, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I don’t see how that could be the ground-breaking feature, considering its been done in Madden, NCAA, FIFA, and now NHL. Interesting though, sounds like it isn’t as much of going through a career and may just be a single game experience.
June 18, 2008 at 10:03 am
What if they let you import your “Superstar” to a created team. Where you and your 4 friends could control your selves. Add in the custom uniform.
Than everyone could have a team of 5..Playing as themselves, with there own uniform.
March 25, 2009 at 1:00 am
i got nba live 09 and i am dieing to make a player but i dont know how do u