NBA Live 365 MIA

If you’ve been watching any of the NBA games so far this year you surely haven’t been able to miss the onslaught of advertising for NBA Live 09’s 365 feature. Certainly the feature is already proven beneficial for improving Live, but what most everyone was waiting for was the daily updates. After all the slogan is “Made Fresh Daily”.

To EA’s credit they’ve done manual updates including details such as player accessories leading up to the start of the season. Though I felt that they should have started 365 right away after the first night of games, it wasn’t a big deal to wait two days and have the very first update be significant and affect every team in the league. So the promise was made that the first update would be out this morning. Yet is no where to be found with no explanation having been given. It sure would’ve been nice to get whatever is causing this delay out of the way two days ago…

Needless to say this isn’t the ideal start for a feature that EA is hoping to be perceived as a value add-on. I’ll have a full look at how well 365 turned out for this year as well as the 2K Insider which hasn’t lived up to its own PR hype. That is when both of them actually get serious and start providing what they’ve promised.

Update: I’ve just now received the following statement from EA

“Hello Everyone,
Like we told you guys yesterday, NBA LIVE 365 would go live today. Well, I’m officially letting all of you know that NBA LIVE 365 has now been turned on, and is scheduled to go live between really late Friday, and early Saturday morning. You should see all roster lineups accurately reflected in-game based on what’s currently happening in the real NBA season. You’re probably wondering about DNA and Tendencies right? Well, those will be ready for you to download soon, but we’re waiting for teams to play a few games so that you see some differences in their DNA and tendencies.

This is an exciting and brand new feature for not only us, but sports games period so there’s bound to be some kinks that need to be worked out. I wanted to thank you on behalf of the entire NBA LIVE 09 development team for being so excited, eager and patient about the implementation of this feature. Because this is happening as the season goes along, it’s something that we wanted worked out and fully tested before we turned on the switch to you guys. Two things to note; there are some inconsistencies in the lineups that you may see, but they will be addressed as we move forward. Also, in order to keep the daily updates going, if there is a player at any point in time during the season that is not in our game but has played a game in the real NBA, you’ll see him reflected in-game as a generic player. Don’t worry, he’ll be implemented in-game accurately that same week, and the generic player will be out of your game.

Thanks again for the patience everyone! These are truly exciting times for all of us as the future of basketball is now!

Thanks,
The NBA LIVE 09 Dev Team”