uring our visit to EA’s Vancouver studio, we got a very early look at the next iteration of its famed but bruised basketball series, NBA Live 08. The team’s lead producer Brian Ulrich stated the goal of this year’s game is to focus on the fundamentals of basketball. While this may seem like an absolute no-brainer for a basketball title, EA’s first two efforts for the next-gen consoles were about as solid as a deflated roundball. EA is aware that they have struggled and is attempting to turn it around this year.

There are a heap of things that the team is concentrating this time around, and although it’s quite a laundry list of needed fixes, they come down to such basics as passing, shooting, rebounding, offense, defense, ball physics, collisions and scenarios. The Locomotion system will have a major overhaul, and while Live 07 relied heavily on canned animations, Live 08 will attempt to minimize them. One example showed was how players will turn on the court, and instead of a player just spinning, just as in real life a player’s head will turn first, and then the rest of the body will follow. Passing looked much more fluid with player’s arms fully extending, and snapping back after the ball was released from the player’s hands.

For shooting, Live 07 separated the buttons for lay-ups and dunks, which Ulrich believed caused gamers to ignore the lay-up button altogether in favor of creating a game that was basically a dunk fest. Live 08 will meld both actions onto one button, and now shooting will completely situational. If a player is driving to the basket in traffic, depending on size and strength, he’ll most likely toss a lay-up instead of going for a power slam. It will also depend on the specific player’s attributes and what’s in their package. Each team’s star players will also have signature shots, which won’t be shared with other players. Kobe will shoot like Kobe, Garnett will shoot like Garnett, and Shaq will shoot like Shaq—especially at the foul line.

Also, instead of players randomly bouncing off of each other, the team is incorporating a much more detailed collision system. Ballers will have mass and weight to them, and when shooting, if someone guarding them knocks into them the player will react accordingly and be forced to adjust their shot. Last year’s game only had one player from each team going up for every rebound that took place, and this year it will not only change with the number of players, but how they’ll react. There will be three different kinds of collisions in Live 08, including ground to ground, air to ground and air to air. While the build we saw was extremely early, it seemed like the team was on the right track.

NBA Live 07 was one of the first games utilizing the deeper ESPN integration with news and radio, and Ulrich is interested in seeing the ESPN licensed used—but he’s not sure which direction the team will go with it this year. Many other details are still unknown including any differences in the online functionality, as well as how EA will add Sixaxis controls to their first PlayStation 3 basketball effort.

While the team has much to work on before the shrink wrap goes on the Live 08 package, Ulrich seemed extremely confident in being able to accomplish all of the team’s goals. Fortunately the group has quite a bit of time before the product ships, and a large team to work with. Even though the Live 08 team has a lot to clean up to make Live a winner on next-gen consoles, maybe going back and focusing on the basics is exactly the shot in the arm the franchise needs.