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NBA Live 13, EA Sports' second reboot of its simulation basketball franchise in the past three years, finally has a "first look" trailer — less than three weeks before the traditional early October release period for basketball games.
NBA Live 13, EA Sports' second reboot of its simulation basketball franchise in the past three years, finally has a "first look" trailer — less than three weeks before the traditional early October release period for basketball games.
"We've been working hard on the game, and so we're excited to share our first in-game trailer today," said a statement released by the game's developers at EA Tiburon today.
The studio also admitted that NBA Live 13 won't make that early October window. "Many fans have been anticipating an early October launch," the statement continued, "but our plan is to release at a later date." EA's competitor, 2K Sports' NBA 2K13, will launch on October 2nd.
While the video below is the first official, in-engine NBA Live 13 trailer, it's not the first publicly available video footage. Ten minutes of gameplay leaked onto YouTube last month; a representative for EA Tiburon told Polygon that the footage came from a pre-alpha version of the game.
After the release of NBA Live 10 in October 2009 to favorable reviews, EA announced in mid-May 2010 that it had rechristened the series NBA Elite, and would release NBA Elite 11 that October. But developer EA Canada was unable to finish the game in time for release; EA delayed it and eventually canceled it outright before shifting the franchise to EA Tiburon. According to a Kotaku report from this past April, Tiburon spent most of 2011 salvaging the working elements of NBA Elite 11 and moved into full production on NBA Live 13 about a year ago. EA showed the game at E3, and had released no further information since then until today.
We reached out to EA Sports for comment, and were directed to the statement from the NBA Live 13 development team. Watch the trailer below and judge the team's progress for yourself.
