 Even on a year where 2K has found a way to piss off the entire community, NBA Live still hasn't been able to take advantage. They've been silent. Let's talk about why this game that's been dominating the basketball scene all 2000s has been nowhere to be found for the last decade. And for the first time, I'm playing NBA Live on the PS5. Next to like NBA Jam, NBA Live was the first big basketball franchise. I believe they started with NBA Live 95 and they dropped games every single year. And every single year, the games got better and better. In the mid 2000s, they were in their prime. Everyone in the nation was playing NBA Live and people were hooping with their friends. If you were playing 2K, you were the weird guy at the time. And NBA Live was doing innovative things to just make the experience of playing these simulated basketball games really, really fun. I believe it was like NBA Live was six. They came out with different badges. So if you were Yao Ming, you had a post scoring badge. So you just post score from anywhere. When you were Vince Carter, you had the high flying badge. You was dunking on people. That was innovative. They were the first ones to do that. I mean, on my second channel, one of the first videos I uploaded was me and Lowe playing an old school and a live dunk content. Am I gonna... Hey, De LaFraud, you actually didn't have to do that. It was probably the most fun I had gaming in a very long time. So how does a game that just got done making a decade worth of memories for millions of people around the world just completely fall off? Well, it started at NBA Live 10. They were losing steam. NBA 2K just came out with the new My Career mode, a story mode. NBA Live had nothing to combat that. NBA Live had something called Adidas Live Run, which was kind of like the crew or what we now call pro-am, a little bit like it. But it was clear to everyone at the time that 2K just was leaps and bounds better in terms of gameplay. And now they came out with the story mode, game set match. Everyone that was a live fan moved over to 2K. There was four years without a game. And then the PS4 and the Xbox One came out. I remember when EA first announced their Ignite engine at E3. They got everybody excited. They told us that when Madden makes an improvement, it's gonna show on the Ignite engine and NBA Live and FIFA will see the improvements as well. How all the sports titles and the EA umbrella work in synergy was the most beautiful prolific thing ever. And everyone in theory was supporting this Ignite engine. But then NBA Live 14 dropped and it was quite possibly the worst basketball game in the history of basketball games. And I'm not exaggerating. They lost a lot of steam at that point. A lot of people lost trust in them because it was a game that a lot of people were excited for and got bamboozled into buying. Live 15 came out, Live 16 came out, both disappointments. They skipped Live 17, Live 18 came out, also a disappointment. Live 19 came out, they skipped Live 20. Live 21 didn't come out and now we don't know what's happening with the franchise. So the real question is, how do you revive a dead franchise that's given little resources that has already failed a comeback attempt about six or seven times? Watch, as I sit here and I create this character, you're gonna quickly believe what I always have been believed is that this game has promise, but it just feels like in every imaginable way, they just take the wrong direction. Who would you like to play like? A guard, a wing or a big? Okay, really preliminary system, let's roll with it. Let's say a wing, all right? A wing shooter, wing scorer, wing defender or playmaker. Which one is Kobe? Kobe's not out here? Cool, that's fine. Kobe doesn't even need to be on here. That's whatever, I didn't even want to make a Kobe bill. So here we have the assassin finishing at the rim grants a boost to mid-range shooting and improves your ability to score in the post. And here we have Vin Sanity finishing at the rim grants a powerful boost to three point shooting. I don't know why Duncan would give you a boost to three point shooting. Let's go with Vin Sanity for a sake. Let's go with 6'6 to make him really Vince Carter. Hey Google, how much does Vince Carter weigh? Carter's 220 pounds. 220 pounds, all right. Big guy. Okay, so we made our own little female Vince Carter. I feel like most EA menus do look beautiful. This presentation is great. Here you can play the story mode on the streets. Here's the court battles, build your squad for global dominance. You can do the live runs and play with people online to live events, drills, shoot around scrimmages. They got all the fundamentals of a basketball game. Every year when E3 comes around, I sit there and I wait for EA to just say something exciting about NBA Live. And every year they find a way to disappoint me and they remind me that they really don't care too much about this title. They actually don't put any meaningful effort to actually make this a really dope experience to play. Which is a shame because the team that exists that's working on this game, I'm sure cares. But they're so understaffed and given so few resources that they just aren't given a chance to even let the shit run. Like there's no way this can get off the ground. Why? Why would my controller turn off controller? Why would you do that to me? You know I'm recording a video controller. How dare you do that to me, bro? Can it even find fucking six people that still play shit? Did it find a lobby? People still play this? Yo, why my character look overweight? What the fuck? Is it the shirt? Why she look like that? Oh my God, we can't start a game because people keep leaving. People are playing the game though. Do you believe this right here? I did not expect people to be online right now. And look, my other teammate left too. Man, so it's about to be me versus a full team of people. This is so dope to me. This environment, the courts, outside of the aliasing is so dope to me, man. And then the gameplay just ruins it. Diep, diep, diep, diep. Good shit, good shit. You got blown by. Come on. That's cash. Buckets, baby. It's high get down. Buckets. Ooh, ooh, ooh. Ooh, ankle breaker. This feels so awkward. Oh, I'm cringing a little bit inside because it doesn't feel real. And it's like, yo, 15 years ago when MbLive06 did something that didn't feel real, we were fine with it because we actually expected that from a game in 2005. But because we're in 2021 right now and we almost want and deserve some kind of simulation basketball experience, none of this is gonna fly, man. She just blew a fucking open layup, man. Mid-range green hundo, that's what it said. The way the hand just clipped through the shirt, the shirt doesn't really fit on the human being like it should. Yeah. Oh, it dunked on my fucking head. All right, good. Bro, good. So you're having fun? Are you having fun? Shoot that. What was that for? She shot that bitch like Kevin Martin. Did he just fumble the ball himself? Oh my God, I actually got up there. Oh, it's up to 15? This is game point. I thought it was up to 21. That means right now we gotta go crazy. Oh my, you fucking saved the game. Pass it up to Dennis Schroeder. Why did it take her that long to make that pass, man? All right, let's D up, down two. Please no, please no, please no. I actually have a lot of stock here and make it no way. Good rebound. Pass that, get up. Tie game, baby, it's game point for both of us now. Now y'all have a bunch of 99 overalls. I got a bunch of CPUs and a 70 overall, all right? Oh, I see you on the cut. Dennis. Yes sir, yes sir, let's get a stop. Yes sir, good cheetah print shorts, buddy. Man, what the fuck, grab a rebound. All right, I can't lose this. I'm actually way too in bed. I'm actually, am I having fun? Please hit that. Yes, yes. I just need a stop, bro. That's really not all I need, man, because I'm getting buckets right now. Why did you just, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh? I wanna game it so bad. Let's go. Pass it inside. Why did you take that? You, oh my God, this Dennis Schroeder through the game. Oh my God, what a stop. Young agent, D and up, Dennis Schroeder on the take, baby. Tie game. I'm very dedicated to getting this victory. No way. Dennis, you're not gonna cut. Is that game? Dennis, get that rebound. Dennis, go up with it. We're up, we're up. One stop, baby. I wish you could play in these places, but with 2K's gameplay. No way. This game sent mats for these clowns. Throw it up, Dennis. Game that. Hell, that's so, that's so tough. That's so tough. How do you revive a franchise that is dead, a franchise that's not getting many resources that has already failed a comeback attempt about six or seven times? NBA Live, you need to make a game that's free to play. You need to call it NBA Live Online. You need to make that free to play game available to everyone on as many platforms as possible. You need to assure all of those people that the game is gonna come with consistent updates and that it's not final. You need to almost tell people it's a beta, like what Fortnite did in its early days. NBA Live Online, beta. People will get on the game because it's free and people love trying free things. People will get on the game because they're frustrated with the competition right now. And beyond all of that, if you can muster together some good concepts, some good game modes and decent gameplay, people will get on the game because they enjoy playing it. How are you gonna monetize it? Well, you can do skins and stuff. You can have like different court designs that cost money. It could be there's plenty of aesthetic things you could add to your character, to your courts, to the world that you create in NBA Live to make money. And I want you to make it a point to people that unlike 2K who's going crazy with the micro transactions that your game is not gonna be pay to win. People are gonna struggle to believe it because it's coming from EA, but you need to assure them that that's the case. Look, nobody is buying this game and so you're not gonna lose out on much gate revenue from just not charging people to hop on the game to begin with. And when you position it like a beta, people are gonna be a lot more likely to allow the small mishaps and missteps. Oh, this game is in progress. It's still being developed. This is not its final form. You come out with a couple of modes that people could actually get behind and are excited about and you drop it at an opportune time like right now where a lot of people are looking for an alternative basketball gaming experience. And there you go, NBA Live. I just sat there, a consumer. I sat there, I gave you a game plan on the best way to make a comeback in 2021. The amount of people that's sitting there right now on Twitter and Instagram and all these other platforms complaining about how there's no good games to play right now, give them a good game to play. Tell them it's free. Tell them it's gonna be different than the other games that take advantage of them and then give them a real reason to stay with good gameplay. You mean tell me that game wouldn't take over, man? Come on. If y'all enjoyed the video, man, you haven't already, you're not subscribed. What are you doing? Subscribe to the channel. My most recent video is right here. 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