So, EA Sports Is Not Giving Up on This NBA Live Lark on PS4

This author will openly admit that he doesn’t know his basketball from his netball, but that doesn’t mean that the sport isn’t all the rage in various parts of the world. It’s little wonder, then, that EA Sports is still eager to muscle its way into the slam dunking space with NBA Live 15 for the PlayStation 4 – the sequel to the publisher’s critically challenged next-gen launch title, er, NBA Live 14.

Considering that the developer virtually apologised to consumers for the awful state of the previous release, it’s going to need a serious overhaul if it wants this edition to compete with the more established NBA 2K15. Fortunately, executive producer Sean O’Brien has spent the best part of his day talking up all kinds of cool improvements on the EA Sports Blog.

These include refined player models and lighting, which will allow you to observe every line on all-star Kobe Bryant’s perfect jaw. Fundamentally, the gameplay has also been tuned, providing matches with a much more realistic flow. To be fair to the developer, it has been quite candid about the flaws found in its previous outing, and what it’s done to improve them.

It’s probably going to be a while before EA Sports gets this brand back on track, but there was a time when FIFA was in a different league to PES, and now it’s comfortably at the top of the Premier League. With the endless financial resources available to the Redwood firm, 2K Games is going to have to make sure that it doesn’t drop the ball. See what we did there?