should NBA Live be released every year?

[Tuomas]

I think there could be serious advantages for us gamers if NBA Live would be released let's say every 2 years. That way we could save money, have all the fun outta the current Live and see a modding frenzy while EA would have more time to develop the new Live and make it better than these yearly updates we're enjoying

Let's take NBA Street for example... they are being released 2 years after the previous ones and you see the result from v1 to 2, and just wait 'til v3 in 2005...

your opinions?

[50first]

prefer it every other year and just get roster patches for the next season. IMO the games will be more solid and more suprising if they had 2years to work on it. would be nice if all sports games did this (including other brands).

[Jay-Peso]

Every year because I think we'd wait 2 years for the same thing we'd get the year after we purchase this years.

It will still increase the same IMO

[Spinners]

Definitly every year. To be honest, i could not wait 2 years for the new live to come out. I could barely wait for 2005 to come out .

[Andrew]

I'd prefer every year. Even though there's a lot of talented patchmakers that can keep a title up to date, we'd have to wait a couple of years for problems to be fixed and let's face it, because there are elements we just can't update our modifications can't perfectly upgrade the game for the next season (eg starting in the following year in Dynasty Mode thus inaccurate and/or duplicate career stats if you update career.dbf, no new audio, etc).

[durvasa]

There are signficant advantages and disadvantage to both, in my opinion. It's an interesting question.

I do believe that the game would improve faster if the development cycle was 2 years instead of 1 year. That is, I think Live 2007, for instance, would be better if EA took two years to make it, instead of if they took a year to make 2006, and then another year to make 2007. The advantage would be that the games would be less buggy, and the game will be put together more seamlessly. With the Live series now, they introduce multiple new features everyyear, but they often seem sort of patched together and not quite working as well together as they potentially could.

On the other hand, if EA only putting out a new game once every two years they wouldn't make as much money on the series, which may not matter much to us but is of primary consideration for them. Also, bugs do exist in the current version (though its not as bad as last year), and it would admittedly be annoying to have to wait 2 years for them to be fixed.

The compromise would be for EA to alternate with a minor update and major update. Instead of trying to cram in new major features every year, they should only put out major upgrades every 2 years. On alternate years when the major upgrades aren't scheduled for release, EA should put out a version with minor updates which tweak gameplay and graphics and fix bugs, and of course includes the new rosters.

[50first]

The compromise would be for EA to alternate with a minor update and major update. Instead of trying to cram in new major features every year, they should only put out major upgrades every 2 years. On alternate years when the major upgrades aren't scheduled for release, EA should put out a version with minor updates which tweak gameplay and graphics and fix bugs, and of course includes the new rosters.

so what your saying is that ea should release a game every year but have it so that every other year see's vast improvements on gameplay or additional game modes. while the ones released in-between just are improvements of the previous version with just roster updates, bug fixes, enchanced graphics, and additional animations?

[Cameron]

Every year most definitely.

I guess you could say that it would be better to wait 2 years so that they can develop it more, but on the other hand, the more versions there are, the more feedback they can get. ie, if there's something in 2006 we don't like, they can fix it for 07. BUT, if there's something we don't like in 06 but 06 never comes out, it will be found in 07.

Also, after a year you start to get tired of some of the flaws in a game (ones that aren't fixeable via patch) - ie 2004's stumbling around after collision. I think it's best they have an annual game.

[durvasa]

The compromise would be for EA to alternate with a minor update and major update. Instead of trying to cram in new major features every year, they should only put out major upgrades every 2 years. On alternate years when the major upgrades aren't scheduled for release, EA should put out a version with minor updates which tweak gameplay and graphics and fix bugs, and of course includes the new rosters.

so what your saying is that ea should release a game every year but have it so that every other year see's vast improvements on gameplay or additional game modes. while the ones released in-between just are improvements of the previous version with just roster updates, bug fixes, enchanced graphics, and additional animations?

Yes. So, they'll spend most of their resources for the game that gets put out every other year. And a few resources to putting out the minor update in the alternate years.