NBA Street confirmed on hold; NBA Ballers shelved too?
Unfortunately, you’ll be missing out on two basketball game titles this year from Electronic Arts. It’s just been confirmed – via EA Sports president Peter Moore, no less – that the NBA Street (Xbox 360, PS3, PSP) series is on “official hiatus”. Meanwhile, NBA Ballers (Xbox 360, PS3) seem to be also in a bit of a jam.
One less basketball game to play with this year, so it seems. Actually, make that two. EA Sports president Peter Moore confirmed himself that the NBA Street (Xbox 360, PS3, PSP) franchise is on official hiatus, while Midway Games‘ NBA Ballers (Xbox 360, PS3)is also in a jam of its own.
Says Moore,
We’ll still do traditional sports, but we’re going to do them a different way. Street is a good example. We built a new Freestyle brand to do different things, and we also need to build our own intellectual properties. We rely on other people’s IP for everything we do and we need to develop some new things. In the old days we had things like SSX that were our own intellectual property, but since then we’ve kind of moved away from that.
Interestingly enough, Moore appears to be considering taking a page out of the successful Wii Sports insofar as tapping into casual gaming is concerned. He furthers,
We need a mixture of experiences that are not only for the hardcore, ‘it’s in the game’ crowd. But if Wii Sports has taught us anything, it’s that people will sit there and play big head tennis all day long. We need to be able to tap into that audience. We need to have something for the sports fan who might not necessarily be a sports gamer, but who wants that 15-minute experience without having to struggle on how to use the controller.
As for NBA Ballers, the buzz is that the franchise is put on a halt as well as the company is apparently trying to squirrel its way out of the existing licensing deal they have with the NBA. We’re still looking into that for a more solid confirmation, so keep it posted right here. We’ll be sure to update you on this.