NBA Live 08 Producer Blog: FIBA - MixMakers.net

kamiy · 03:13 AM

A new NBA Live 08 producer blog entry has been posted over at IGN and can be found here. The latest entry, posted by Nate McDonald, takes an in-depth look at the inclusion of the international teams in NBA Live 08 and the new FIBA World Championship Mode.

But for the lazybones who don't want to click here is the article:

Quote:

FIBA in NBA Live 08
Hi Everyone,

Welcome to another producer blog for NBA LIVE 08. My name is Nate McDonald and my last blog revolved around Signature Go-To Moves and Hot Spots as part of Go-To Basketball. In this blog, I am going to go into a little bit more of an in-depth perspective on one of our new game modes: FIBA World Championship Mode.

Basketball has evolved over the years to the point where it is more of a global experience now than it ever has been before. Dirk Nowitzki becoming the first European born player ever to win MVP in the NBA this year is a great example of how far basketball has come all over the world over the last decade. So what better way to tie in this global experience than incorporating the license for all of the best international teams and players and allowing you to play the best against the best from within each of the most talented basketball nations from all over the world.

FIBA World Championship Mode is an 8-team single elimination tournament that allows you to compete with any of the top international teams in the world or any of the 30 NBA teams. There are 8 international teams and they are: USA, Spain, France, China, Italy, Greece, Argentina, and Germany. The international teams are all available to play with not only just in FIBA World Championship Mode, but also in Play Now if you just want to play a quick exhibition game with any of them.

All of the official FIBA logos are being used in the game. All of the uniforms are accurately represented for all 8 of the national teams, including the 2007 version of Team USA’s uniforms that they are wearing for this year’s FIBA World Championship qualifying tournament. All of the players are rated as close to real life as possible, including their hot spots. All of the international players have real heads used with real reference that we gathered through FIBA resources, as well as through extensive research for photo reference for every international player from all over the internet. Even the body types were made as authentic as possible based on the same photo reference that was gathered.

In addition to all of this, all of the rosters have been authentically replicated, including all players and jersey numbers. However, one thing you may notice when first looking at the roster is the omission of players like Kobe Bryant from Team USA and Andrea Bargnani from Team Italy, as examples. The reason for this is that the FIBA license does not allow us to add new players to each international team roster until they have played in a FIBA World Championship league sponsored event, for example, the Qualifying Tournament that starts early next month. When Kobe Bryant and Andrea Bargnani, among others, actually play a game in the Qualifying Tournament next month we will officially have the rights to add them to their respective international team rosters. So barring injury, these players should be available on each of their international teams via roster download when the game ships in early October. All that said, the rosters are authentic as per what each international team’s roster consisted of in the 2006 FIBA World Championships.

Now I know that some of you may be thinking that overall, the feature may seem a little bit light. The reason for this is because the deal for the FIBA license was not signed until late April of this year. At the time the deal was signed, we contemplated waiting until NBA LIVE 09 to unveil the full feature, but instead we decided to implement a first look feature to give everyone a little taste of what is to come in the future now that we have acquired this license.

As you can tell, we are very excited to be able to give you all an early look in NBA LIVE 08 at what is to become a much larger and full-fledged feature within the NBA LIVE franchise in years to come, and we hope you enjoy the addition of this new game mode and international teams as much as we do.

Hopefully you all have a better understanding into what has gone into the creation of the FIBA World Championship mode for NBA LIVE 08 this year and the level of detail that goes into the decision making process on our end. I will continue to be browsing the site every so often so please feel free to leave comments or questions because as always, I am very interested in what you all have to say.

Thanks,

Nate.